Purpose. In line with the growing attention on non-motor symptoms and disturbance of affective and emotional processing in Parkinson's disease, we aimed to study the different aspects of facial ...emotion expression evaluation in a group of Parkinson's disease without cognitive decline in treatment with common antiparkinsonian drugs, matched for sex, age and education with healthy subjects.
Materials and methods. The study was conducted on 30 patients (13 male; mean age: 63.3 ± 6.7; mean age of disease onset: 56.5 ± 7.1; mean duration of the disease: 6.7 ± 2.6) with a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease and receiving dopaminergic therapy, as compared with 30 healthy controls. Different tasks of facial expression evaluation were used. All patients were assessed for neuropsychological and psychological profiles during optimized medication-on condition.
Results. The total number of errors in facial emotion recognition task is higher (p < 0.001) in patients than controls and it is due to errors in identifying sadness (p < 0.001), anger (p = 0.01) and fear (p < 0.001). No differences in the total amount of activation, valence and intensity ratings were found. The difference between patients and controls in emotion recognition appears to be independent by the severity of depressive symptoms.
Conclusions. The present study provides further evidence of altered non-verbal emotional information processing in Parkinson's disease patients, suggesting that nigrostriatal dopaminergic depletion leads also to emotional information processing dysfunction. The consequences of these emotional encoding disturbances in daily living and their relationship to mood and behavioural disorders remain to be clarified.
Abstract Background The short version of the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI-125) has been employed for the study of personality traits in both clinical and normal populations. However, to ...the best of our knowledge, no studies explored the psychometric properties of this instrument in healthy individuals across the lifespan. We here provide the Italian normative data and present the personality features according to age and gender in a sample of healthy individuals. Methods A cross-sectional study was carried out in a total of 1,430 Italian healthy individuals ranging from 13 to 67 years (59.3% females). We evaluated the factorial model of the TCI-125, explored the internal consistency of the scales and carried out univariate analyses of variance for the investigation of age and gender differences in temperament and character dimensions. Results Confirmatory factor analysis only partially confirmed the factor structure, with some RD, SD, and CO items showing poor fit. Overall we found acceptable internal consistencies for all the dimensions of the TCI-125 across all age groups, except for Reward Dependence, Persistence, and Novelty Seeking, which showed unsatisfactory internal consistency in younger age groups. Furthermore, we found significant age differences in most temperament and all character dimensions. Finally, in specific age groups we also observed significantly lower scores in males compared to females in Harm Avoidance, Reward Dependence and all character dimensions except for Self-Directedness, on which males scored higher than females. Conclusions Although this study only partially confirmed the factor structure of the TCI-125 and suggested limited homogeneity for some temperament scales, overall our results supported the reliability of the TCI-125, which can therefore be considered a useful tool for exploring personality traits in both clinical and normal samples. Moreover, this study suggested the need of using this instrument with caution in adolescents.
Abstract Background There is increasing awareness of the need of subtyping major depressive disorder, particularly in the setting of medical disease. The aim of this investigation was to use both ...DSM-IV comorbidity and the Diagnostic Criteria for Psychosomatic Research (DCPR) for characterizing depression in the medically ill. Methods 1700 patients were recruited from 8 medical centers in the Italian Health System and 1560 agreed to participate. They all underwent a cross-sectional assessment with DSM-IV and DCPR structured interviews. 198 patients (12.7%) received a diagnosis of major depressive disorder. Data were submitted to cluster analysis. Results Two clusters were identified: depressed somatizers and irritable/anxious depression. The somatizer cluster included 58.6% of the cases and was characterized by DCPR somatization syndromes (persistent somatization, functional somatic symptoms secondary to a psychiatric disorder, conversion symptoms, and anniversary reactions) and DCPR alexithymia. The anxious/irritable cluster had 41.4% of the total sample and included DCPR irritable mood and type A behavior and DSM-IV anxiety disorders. Limitations The study has limitations due to its cross-sectional nature. Further, these findings require additional validation in another sample. Conclusions The findings indicate the need of expanding clinical assessment in the medically ill to include the various manifestations of somatization, irritable mood, type A behavior and alexithymia, as encompassed by the DCPR. Subtyping major depressive disorder may yield improved targets for psychosomatic research and treatment trials.
Purpose
Since long-term survivorship is now a reality for an increasingly number of people with a history of cancer, understanding their quality of life (QoL) can inform health care policy as well as ...help supporting individual patients. This study was aimed to quantify QoL of this specific population in comparison with data provided for both the general population and cancer patients and to assess QoL association with several sociodemographic, clinical, and psychological variables.
Methods
Three hundred fourteen Italian long-term cancer survivors (people who have been free from cancer and cancer treatments for at least 5 years) completed a battery of questionnaires including the SF12 for QoL assessment.
Results
Both physical and mental functioning were higher than those among Italian cancer patients but lower than those of the Italian general population (
p
< .001). Poorer QoL (physical and mental functioning) was associated more often with psychological conditions (as anxiety and depression) than with sociodemographic and cancer-related variables.
Conclusions
These data support an ongoing specific interest in the QoL of long-term cancer survivors and suggest the need for further study of multidimensional functioning in this population.
Abstract Psychometric tools, such as the Perceptual Aberration Scale (PAS), have been developed to identify people at risk to develop psychosis. This paper aims at providing an Italian version of the ...Perceptual Aberration Scale and its normative data for the general juvenile Italian population. The Italian version of the PAS was produced using three independent translators. It was administered to 1089 non-clinical participants, stratified into three age-groups, i.e., 8–13, 14–17 and 18–24. The Italian version of the PAS displayed good internal consistency in each age-group evaluated (i.e. Alpha Coefficients: 0.90 for the 8–13 age-group, 0.84 for the 14–17 age-group, and 0.87 for the 18–24 age-group) and the assumption of unidimensionality was corraborate. Furthermore, normative data for the three groups were collected (i.e. cut-offs: 25 for the 8–13 age-group, 21 for the 14–17 age-group and 20 for the 18–24 age-group) and an age-related difference, as the 18-24 group scored lower than the younger groups, was found. The Italian version of the PAS proved to be a reliable psychometric tool to investigate perceptual aberration during childhood, adolescence and young adulthood.
Abstract Sub-threshold psychotic symptoms are quite commonly present in general population. Among these, Magical Ideation (MI) has been proved to be a valid predictor of psychosis. However, the ...genetic and environmental influences on the interplay between MI and personality have not fully been explored. A total of 534 adult twins from the population-based Italian Twin Register were assessed for MI using the MI Scale (MIS) and for personality with the temperament and character inventory (TCI). A Multivariate Cholesky model was applied with Mx statistical program. The best-fitting model showed that additive genetic and unshared environmental factors explain approximately the same proportion of variance in MI, whereas a less strong genetic influence on personality traits emerged. Relevant correlations between MI and specific personality traits (novelty seeking, cooperativeness, self-directedness, self-transcendence) were found, suggesting shared influences for MI and these traits. Both genetic and environmental factors explained these correlations, with genetic factors playing a predominant role. Moderate-to-substantial genetic effects on MI and personality were found. Shared genetic and environmental effects underlie the phenotypic correlation between MI (psychosis-proneness) and personality traits, i.e. self-directedness (negative association) and self-transcendence (positive association), potentially representing predictive markers of psychosis liability related to schizotypy and personality.
Abstract The assessment of schizotypy allows to identify people at risk to develop psychosis. For this purpose, psychometric tools have been developed, such as the Magical Ideation Scale (MIS). This ...scale investigates attenuated forms of thought transmission experiences, thought withdrawal and aberrant beliefs, related to positive schizotypy. This study aims at providing an Italian version of the MIS and its normative data in the general population from childhood to adulthood, being the first study evaluating subjects under 17 year-old. The Italian MIS version was translated by three independent operators and administered to 1378 non-clinical participants, stratified into four age groups (i.e., 8–13,14–17,18–24 and 25–34). The unidimensionality of the scale was supported, and its internal consistency was satisfactory (i.e., ordinal Cronbach's αs ranging from 0.86 to 0.90 in different age groups), as well as test–retest reliability (i.e., one-month ICC of 0.82 in a retested sub-sample). Normative data for the age groups were provided. Specific gender and age-related differences in MIS score were found, i.e. females scored higher than males in the 25–34 age group, which in general, as a group, scored lower than all the other age groups. This study provided evidence of reliability for the Italian version of the MIS in childhood and adolescence, for the first time, as well as in adulthood, showing specific gender and age effects in the early adult cohort.
A link between depression and insecure attachment has long been postulated. Although many studies examined the relationship between depressive symptoms and attachment, relatively few studies were ...performed on patients diagnosed with depression. Also, research on patients with bipolar disorder is scarce.
We aimed at testing the association between attachment insecurity and unipolar and bipolar depression.
We studied 21 patients with bipolar disorder, current episode depressed, and three age- and sex-matched groups, each consisting of 21 individuals: patients with major depressive disorder, recurrent episode; patients with epilepsy; non-clinical participants. The Experience in Close Relationships questionnaire was used to assess adult attachment style.
Patients with both bipolar and unipolar depression displayed significantly higher scores on attachment-related avoidance as compared with patients with epilepsy and non-clinical participants. Also, patients with bipolar depression scored significantly higher on attachment-related anxiety than all other groups. In both psychiatric groups, attachment dimensions were not significantly correlated with global clinical severity or severity of depression.
Despite some study limitations, our results are consistent with some previous studies and provide support to Bowlby's seminal hypothesis that attachment insecurity may predispose to depression. Attachment theory may provide a valuable theoretical framework for future research and for guiding treatment.
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