In 2017, a young woman was admitted as an emergency patient suffering from chronic pain to the private hospital where psychiatrist Dr Paul Conti worked in New York. After reassuring her that he was an Italian from New Jersey, just like her father, they embarked on a two-year journey to break her out of her paralysis.
That young woman was Stefani Germanotta, better known as Lady Gaga. The actress and singer has since been open about how being raped as a 19-year-old and becoming pregnant caused a trauma so profound that she was left living with fibromyalgia – a long-term condition that causes pain all over the body, sometimes sparked by trauma or severe stress.
