Regardless of its nature, suicidal ideation, in the absence of another diagnosis, is quintessentially associated with major clinical depression. Although for the characteristics of being depressed it ...is reasonable to have some wish to die, there is no real attempt to understanding the suicidal mind. Clinicians are therefore often inclined to consider suicidal ideation a symptom of major depression. Yet, most depressed patients do not die by suicide, and many of them never experience suicidal ideation even in the most severe depressing scenario. At a closer look, when one works with suicidal individual, suicide appears complex and not line with the obsolete medical model. There are often warning signs for suicide, and suicidal individuals experience mental pain as a common denominator of many adverse events.
A case report of an entrepreneur with no previous psychiatric history describes the process of meditating suicide as a dimension overlapping the depressive disorder. Details of how this 63-year-old male developed high suicide risk are reported, and clinicians are guided into the understanding of suicide risk.
Nowadays, clinicians are requested to provide an in-depth investigation into the suicidal mind, an assessment adjunctive to the psychiatric evaluation. A phenomenological approach may be the key to unlock the suicidal mind. Clinicians may use such tool in light of the need for the empathic understanding of human suffering as well as a paradigm shift in the care of suicidal individuals.
Facing suicide risk is probably the most difficult task for clinicians when dealing with patients in crisis. It requires professional, intellectual, and emotional efforts. Suicide risk assessment can ...sometimes be distressing for clinicians, and such a state may favour the avoidance of an in-depth exploration of suicidal thoughts and behaviour. Patients often feel subjected to interpersonal assessments with little opportunity to explore their perspectives. The "One size fits all" approach tends to create distance and paradoxically contributes to an increase in the risk of suicide. Traditional clinical factors may be of limited value if a shared understanding of the patient's suicide risk is missed. To understand the suicidal mind, it is necessary to take the point of view of the subject in crisis. In this essay, the "operational model of mental pain as a main ingredient of suicide" provided by Edwin Shneidman' is overviewed with the aim of a better empathic understanding of patients' sufferance. With a phenomenological approach, the suicidal crisis appears as a complex, pervasive state rather than as a symptom of a mental disorder, as the new paradigm also suggests. In this regard, the "mentalistic" aspects of suicide propose a broader insight into the suicidal scenario far beyond the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders. In this article, the perspective of individuals who deem their mental pain to be intolerable is described to make sense of their ambivalence between the wish to die and the wish to live that can prevail if relief is provided.
Antibiotics are usually prescribed to cure infections but they also have significant modulatory effects on the gut microbiota. Several alterations of the intestinal bacterial community have been ...reported during antibiotic treatment, including the reduction of beneficial bacteria as well as of microbial alpha-diversity. Although after the discontinuation of antibiotic therapies it has been observed a trend towards the restoration of the original condition, the new steady state is different from the previous one, as if antibiotics induced some kind of irreversible perturbation of the gut microbial community. The poorly absorbed antibiotic rifaximin seem to be different from the other antibiotics, because it exerts non-traditional effects additional to the bactericidal/bacteriostatic activity on the gut microbiota. Rifaximin is able to reduce bacterial virulence and translocation, has anti-inflammatory properties and has been demonstrated to positively modulate the gut microbial composition. Animal models, culture studies and metagenomic analyses have demonstrated an increase in
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abundance after rifaximin treatment, probably consequent to the induction of bacterial resistance, with no major change in the overall gut microbiota composition. Antibiotics are therefore modulators of the symbiotic relationship between the host and the gut microbiota. Specific antibiotics, such as rifaximin, can also induce eubiotic changes in the intestinal ecosystem; this additional property may represent a therapeutic advantage in specific clinical settings.
The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is an unprecedented traumatic event influencing the healthcare, economic, and social welfare systems worldwide. In order to slow the infection rates, ...lockdown has been implemented almost everywhere. Italy, one of the countries most severely affected, entered the "lockdown" on March 8, 2020.
The COvid Mental hEalth Trial (COMET) network includes 10 Italian university sites and the National Institute of Health. The whole study has three different phases. The first phase includes an online survey conducted between March and May 2020 in the Italian population. Recruitment took place through email invitation letters, social media, mailing lists of universities, national medical associations, and associations of stakeholders (e.g., associations of users/carers). In order to evaluate the impact of lockdown on depressive, anxiety and stress symptoms, multivariate linear regression models were performed, weighted for the propensity score.
The final sample consisted of 20,720 participants. Among them, 12.4% of respondents (N = 2,555) reported severe or extremely severe levels of depressive symptoms, 17.6% (N = 3,627) of anxiety symptoms and 41.6% (N = 8,619) reported to feel at least moderately stressed by the situation at the DASS-21.According to the multivariate regression models, the depressive, anxiety and stress symptoms significantly worsened from the week April 9-15 to the week April 30 to May 4 (p < 0.0001). Moreover, female respondents and people with pre-existing mental health problems were at higher risk of developing severe depression and anxiety symptoms (p < 0.0001).
Although physical isolation and lockdown represent essential public health measures for containing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, they are a serious threat for mental health and well-being of the general population. As an integral part of COVID-19 response, mental health needs should be addressed.
Consistent evidence indicates the association between inflammatory markers and suicidal behavior. The burden related to immunological differences have been widely documented in both major affective ...disorders and suicidal behavior. Importantly, abnormally elevated pro-inflammatory cytokines levels have been reported to correlate with suicidal behavior but whether and to what extent specific inflammatory cytokines abnormalities may contribute to our understanding of the complex pathophysiology of suicide is unknown. The present manuscript aimed to systematically review the current literature about the role of pro-inflammatory cytokines in suicidal behavior. Most studies showed a link between abnormally higher interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), kynurenic acid (KYN), and lower IL-2, IL-4, and interferon (IFN)-γ levels in specific brain regions and suicidal behavior. Unfortunately, most studies are not able to exclude the exact contribution of major depressive disorder (MDD) as a mediator/moderator of the link between inflammatory cytokines abnormalities and suicidal behavior. The association between suicidal patients (both suicide attempters or those with suicidal ideation) and the altered immune system was documented by most studies, but this does not reflect the existence of a specific causal link. Additional studies are needed to clarify the immune pathways underlying suicidal behavior.
The gut microbiota is involved in the maintenance of the homeostasis of the human body and its alterations are associated with the development of different pathological conditions. The liver is the ...organ most exposed to the influence of the gut microbiota, and recently important connections between the intestinal flora and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have been described. In fact, HCC is commonly associated with liver cirrhosis and develops in a microenvironment where inflammation, immunological alterations, and cellular aberrations are dramatically evident. Prevention and diagnosis in the earliest stages are still the most effective weapons in fighting this tumor. Animal models show that the gut microbiota can be involved in the promotion and progression of HCC directly or through different pathogenic mechanisms. Recent data in humans have confirmed these preclinical findings, shedding new light on HCC pathogenesis. Limitations due to the different experimental design, the ethnic and hepatological setting make it difficult to compare the results and draw definitive conclusions, but these studies lay the foundations for a pathogenetic redefinition of HCC. Therefore, it is evident that the characterization of the gut microbiota and its modulation can have an enormous diagnostic, preventive, and therapeutic potential, especially in patients with early stage HCC.
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