The outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has dramatically changed our habits and routines. Uncertainty, insecurity, instability for the present and future, and reduced autonomy and ...self-directedness, are common feelings at the time of COVID-19. These aspects are very important during emerging adulthood. In spite of the fact that medical reports suggest that youth are less prone to experience COVID-19 infections, emerging adults might be at higher risk for their psychological adjustment. Emerging adults showed higher concerns about their role as a possible asymptomatic carrier than being positive with COVID-19 themselves. Both worries and concerns about COVID-19 and psychological maladjustment may be related to cultural factors. Individualism, collectivism, equality, and hierarchy seem to be meaningful perspectives to take into account. A total of 1183 Italian emerging adults were asked to fill out an online survey during the second week of the national lockdown in Italy. Results showed they reported an accurate perceived knowledge about COVID-19. At the same time, they showed higher worries and concerns about COVID-19 for their relatives, followed by more general/social worries. The lowest score included worries about COVID-19 related to themselves. State anxiety and stress levels were above the normal cutoff, confirming the challenges that emerging adults are facing during the pandemic. On one hand, emerging adults' collectivistic orientation was related to higher perceived risks of infection; on the other hand, it predicted lower psychological maladjustment, controlling for socio-demographic variables. The study suggests that to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and decrease levels of psychological maladjustment in emerging adulthood, individuals' cultural orientation such as the wish of sharing common goals with others, interdependence, and sociability, have to be emphasized and promoted as protective factors.
The COVID-19 pandemic is showing a strong impact on people in terms of uncertainty and instability it has caused in different areas of daily life. Uncertainty and instability are also emotions that ...characterize emerging adulthood (EA). They generate worries about the present and the future and are a source of anxiety that impacts negatively on personal and interpersonal functioning. Anxiety seems a central effect of the pandemic and recent studies have suggested that it is linked to COVID-19 risk perception. In the present study, a sample of 1045 Italian emerging adults was collected: (1) to assess anxiety severity and perceived risk related to COVID-19 and their association and (2) to compare general health and protective factors such as attitudes about security, relationships, self-esteem, and self-efficacy across anxiety severity and perceived risk categories. The findings of this study highlighted that anxiety severity categories were distributed homogeneously across the sample and that half of the participants referred to moderate-severe anxiety. A series of analysis of variances and
comparisons showed that general health and all protective factors decreased according to anxiety severity. They were higher in participants with high perceived risk, with the exception of self-efficacy. Given the challenging features of the pandemic and EA, it is crucial to monitor anxiety severity in order to prevent last longing effects on mental and physical health, as well as keeping emerging adults informed about the risks related to the pandemic. Intervention and supportive programs based on improving self-esteem and self-efficacy, as well as confidence in relationships, should be offered to emerging adults over the long term, beyond the current outbreak.
A number of studies have suggested close associations between maternal postpartum mental health (depressive and anxious symptoms), mother-infant bonding, and parenting stress. However, the ...relationship between maternal bonding and parenting stresshas hardly been explored in published literature. This cross-sectional study explored whether maternal bonding could mediate the effect of postpartum maternal mental health on parenting stress. This study assessed maternal bonding (MPAS), depressive and anxious symptoms (EPDS; STAI), and parenting stress (PSI) at 3 months postpartum in a community sample of 105 women (
(
) = 32.60 (4.18) years old). Spearman's correlation analyses showed moderate to high correlations between these factors. The three mediation models run showed that mother's MPAS partially mitigates the effects of EPDS (
= 0.71;
= 0.217; 95% CI = 0.290/1.136) and STAI State (
= 0.39;
= 0.113; 95% CI = 0.178/0.625) on PSI, and totally mediated the relationship between STAI Trait and PSI (
= 0.59;
= 0.155; 95% CI = 0.303/0.912). Maternal bonding resulted to be a relevant factor in the association between maternal mental health and parenting stress. This highlights the importance of interventions focusing on mother-infant relationship to reduce parenting stress and prevent developmental difficulties in children.
This retrospective-descriptive study investigated how primary and middle-school children perceived the first COVID-19 lockdown in Italy (March–May 2020) as manifested in their drawings. Once school ...restarted after the first COVID-19 wave, and as part of a structured school re-entry program run in their class in September 2020, 900 Italian children aged 7–13 were asked to draw a moment of their life during the lockdown. The drawings were coded and quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed; several pictorial examples are illustrated in this article. Most children used colorful and full-body representations of the self, but in almost half of the pictures drawn by older students, the self was either missing or represented without the face visible. Most children drew the interior of their houses, and the outside world was completely invisible in over half of the pictures. The most represented activities among younger students were playing or sport, followed by screentime or technology-use. Domestic routines and distance learning were also depicted. Most children, but predominantly girls, drew characters showing emotional cohesion clues, and more younger pupils and girls depicted contentment as their main emotion. Conflicting emotions were virtually non-existent. Our data suggest that children coped with the lockdown through play, screen, and technology use. The high incidence of the missing self-representation in preadolescents could indicate how the enforced loneliness and lack of direct physical contact with others impacted their perception of the self. The findings presented here deepen our knowledge of the dynamics connected to the effects of the COVID crisis on children and young people and show how drawings can provide a valuable window into children’s emotions and perceptions.
The present study focuses on the multifaceted concept of self-disturbance in schizophrenia, adding knowledge about a not yet investigated aspect, which is the interoceptive accuracy. Starting from ...the assumption that interoceptive accuracy requires an intact sense of self, which otherwise was proved to be altered in schizophrenia, the aim of the present study was to explore interoceptive accuracy in a group of schizophrenia patients, compared to healthy controls. Furthermore, the possible association between interoceptive accuracy and patients' positive and negative symptomatology was assessed. To pursue these goals, a group of 23 schizophrenia patients and a group of 23 healthy controls performed a heartbeat perception task. Patients' symptomatology was assessed by means of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). Results demonstrated significantly lower interoceptive accuracy in schizophrenia patients compared to healthy controls. This difference was not accounted for participants' age, BMI, anxiety levels, and heart rate. Furthermore, patients' illness severity, attention and pharmacological treatment did not influence their interoceptive accuracy levels. Interestingly, a strong positive relation between interoceptive accuracy and positive symptoms severity, especially Grandiosity, was found. The present results demonstrate for the first time that interoceptive accuracy is altered in schizophrenia. Furthermore, they prove a specific association between interoceptive accuracy and positive symptomatology, suggesting that the symptom Grandiosity might be protective against an altered basic sense of self in patients characterized by higher sensibility to their inner bodily sensations.
Imitation is a crucial process for learning and brain development. It is based on the mirror neuron mechanism and underlies our understanding of actions and the gestures of others. Some researchers ...hypothesized a possible correlation between a low functioning mirror neuron system (MNS) and developmental coordination disorder, including dysgraphic deficit. However, no studies have verified whether imitation of graphic gestures by exploiting the properties of the MNS could improve handwriting. This study evaluates the effects of imitation training of handwriting in five children with handwriting difficulties aged 8 to 10 years. The training lasted for five months, and was undertaken three times a week, for a total number of 60 sessions for each child. Before and after the training, we evaluated the degree of handwriting impairment using the Concise Evaluation Scale for Children's Handwriting (BHK). Our results suggest that handwriting imitation training produced a significant qualitative change in the children's writing, likely due to exercises that stimulated fine motor imitation. Furthermore, the imitation also involved ergonomic and biomechanical aspects relevant to improving imitative writing after observing the model. Each child has therefore reached an adequate level of writing, suggesting the effectiveness of the proposed intervention.
COVID-19 has affected learning and the outdoor activities of more than 862 million children or adolescents worldwide. This study investigated the mental health of Italian children and explored their ...psychological response and coping strategies in different COVID-19 epidemic severity areas, with the aims of alleviating the impacts of COVID-19, promoting targeted intervention, and reducing the risk of future psychological problems. 1074 parents of children aged 6 to 12 years old participated in an ad-hoc online survey. Among them, 40.3% were from the high-risk areas in the North, and 59.7% were from the medium/low-risk areas in the center of Italy. The results showed that, compared to the children in medium- or low-risk areas, children in the North scored significantly higher for symptoms of anxiety, moods, and cognitive changes, showing a “ripple effect” trend. Moreover, children in the northern areas used fewer task-oriented strategies and more emotion- and avoidance-oriented strategies than those in the central areas. Specifically, children in the northern areas were more likely to show acceptance and seek affection from others, while those in the central areas used more humor when their parents talked about quarantine or coronavirus. These findings provide relevant evidence and a reference point for crisis management in children’s mental health
Personality Features in Obesity Buratta, Livia; Pazzagli, Chiara; Delvecchio, Elisa ...
Frontiers in psychology,
01/2021, Volume:
11
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Obesity is a widespread and broadly consequential health condition associated with numerous medical complications that could increase mortality rates. As personality concerned individual's patterns ...of feeling, behavior, and thinking, it may help in understanding how people with obesity differ from people with normal-weight status in their typical weight-relevant behavior. So far, studies about personality and BMI associations have mainly focused on broad personality traits. The main purpose of this study was to explore the personality and health associations among a clinical group composed of 46 outpatients with overweight/obesity (mean age = 55.83; SD = 12.84) in comparison to a healthy control group that included 46 subjects (mean age = 54.96; SD = 12.60). Both the clinical and control groups were composed of 14 males and 32 females. Several personality and psychopathological aspects were assessed with the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI). The results of the analysis of variance of aligned rank transformed (ART) showed that patients with overweight/obesity reported higher scores for Somatic Complaints, Depression, and Borderline Features than the control group. Logistic regression highlighted specifically that the subscales of the Borderline Features assessing the Negative Relationship contributed to the increased risk of belonging to the clinical group. For the purpose of this study, the role of gender was considered. The present findings highlight the importance of focusing on assessing personality functioning in the health context and on specific characteristics of interpersonal relationships to promote more tailored treatments.
Overweight and obesity in childhood has reached epidemic levels, and their roles in physical and psychological health are now recognized. Recently, researchers have focused on the impact of these ...weight problems in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) domains, which are less investigated in children. This exploratory study examined the differences in HRQoL domains between a clinical group who were overweight/obesity treatment-seeking (n = 58) and a normal-weight group (n = 44) in a sample of 102 children, with a specific focus on school functioning and well-being. The second aim explored the link between our findings and other HRQoL dimensions. After controlling for sex and age, a multivariate analysis of variance showed lower levels in school functioning and well-being dimensions between overweight/obesity than normal-weight (F = 4.72; p < 0.05). Correlation analyses highlighted positive links between lower school functioning and well-being and lower levels of self-esteem (r = 0.308; p < 0.01) and social domains in terms of friendships (r = 0.522 ; p < 0.001) and family relationships (r = 0.561; p < 0.001) in children who were with overweight and obesity. This study discusses the implications of these findings in educational research and practices.
The transition to parenthood is widely considered a period of increased vulnerability often accompanied by stress. Abidin conceived parenting stress as referring to specific difficulties in adjusting ...to the parenting role. Most studies of psychological distress arising from the demands of parenting have investigated the impact of stress on the development of dysfunctional parent-child relationships and on adult and child psychopathology. Studies have largely focused on mothers' postnatal experience; less attention has been devoted to maternal prenatal characteristics associated with subsequent parental stress and studies of maternal prenatal predictors are few. Furthermore, no studies have examined that association exclusively with samples of first-time mothers. With an observational prospective study design with two time periods, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of mothers' attachment style, maternal prenatal attachment to the fetus and dyadic adjustment during pregnancy (7th months of gestation) and their potential unique contribution to parenting stress 3 months after childbirth in a sample of nulliparous women. Results showed significant correlations between antenatal measures. Maternal attachment style (especially relationship anxiety) was negatively correlated with prenatal attachment and with dyadic adjustment; positive correlations resulted between prenatal attachment and dyadic adjustment. Each of the investigated variables was also good predictor of parenting stress 3 months after childbirth. Findings suggested how these dimensions could be considered as risk factors in the transition to motherhood and in the very beginning of the emergence of the caregiving system, especially with first-time mothers.
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