Falling ill and getting better

Halfway down the list sits essere in terapia, and the noun inside it is wider in Italian than « therapy » is in English. La terapia is any treatment a doctor prescribes: a week of tablets is una terapia antibiotica, the handling of chronic pain is la terapia del dolore, and the ward where the sickest patients lie is la terapia intensiva. So è in terapia da settembre tells you only that somebody has been under treatment since September, and nothing about what kind. « Therapy » in English has drifted the other way. Standing on its own it means seeing a psychotherapist — « she is in therapy » is heard as exactly that — and for anything else it needs a word welded in front: « physiotherapy », « radiotherapy », « gene therapy ». For the general idea English keeps a different noun altogether, « treatment », and it names its intensive care unit after « care » rather than after therapy at all. The result is a sentence that mistranslates itself and still sounds natural: read in terapia as « in therapy » and you have quietly handed somebody a diagnosis nobody gave them.