Clinical Neuropsychiatry最新文献

Objective: The purpose of this paper was to contribute to the psychometric properties and dimensionality of the IGD-20.

Method: An online survey was completed by 392 Italian online gamers (M_age = 29.2, SD = 11.3; 45.2% males). A battery of self-report questionnaires was administered to assess internet gaming disorder, internet addiction, loneliness, anxiety, depression, stress, social-interaction anxiety, self-esteem, and perceived social support. To test the factor structure of IGD-20, both traditional (i.e., EFA and CFA) and innovative (i.e., ESEM) techniques were applied. Convergent, concurrent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity were evaluated.

Results: Our study revealed the outperforming 3-factor ESEM model (χ²=39.951, p = 0.0021; RMSEA = 0.056, 90% C.I. [0.032 - 0.079]; CFI = 0.986; TLI = 0.965; and SRMR = 0.017; ω = .76, .77, and .79, respectively) as a new short version (IGD-10SV) for the IGD-20. The validity of the IGD-10SV was supported by significant associations with theoretically related measures.

Conclusions: The current findings support the adoption of the analytic ESEM approach for complex multidimensional measures and the use of the IGD-10SV for the assessment of internet gaming disorder.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) constitutes a challenge in the field of mental disorders, given its high prevalence in the general population and its impact on the quality of life, while representing a major burden of health worldwide. Currently, much interest in the pathophysiology of MMD ìs also directed towards disentangling the possible biological mechanisms shared with that medical condition known as metabolic syndrome (MeS) that is frequent in the general population and often comorbid with MDD. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to summarize the evidence on the relationships between depression and MeS, and to comment on the common factors and mediators present in these two conditions. For this reason, some of the main databases of scientific literature were accessed, and all the papers fulfilling the goal of this review were selected. The results demonstrated the existence of common pathways between depression and metabolic syndrome involving several mediators, such as inflammation, the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis, oxidative stress, platelet functions, coronary heart disease and peripheral hormones, thus requiring strict attention from the scientific community. Indeed, such pathways may be targeted in the near future in order to pave the way to new treatment options for these disorders.

Objective: The hip and knee arthroplasties are reliable and suitable surgical procedures aimed at restoring the patients' functioning. The most representative age range for these replacement surgeries is between 65 and 84 years for females. With aging, the likelihood of developing cognitive deficits increases, and there is evidence that elderly patients undergoing surgery orthopedic are at higher risk of developing cognitive problems in the postoperative phase. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is often used for cognitive evaluation, but different cut-offs and validations are available in the literature. Given the importance of the problem, in this work we studied a hospitalized population candidate for orthopedic surgery to determine a new specific validation of the MoCA to assess the risk of MCI.

Method: We applied MoCA and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) to a sample of 492 (333 women) hospitalized patients for knee (74%) or hip surgery. A non-parametric receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was conducted to investigate the predictive accuracy of the MoCA to assess cognitive impairment, using MMSE as the gold standard.

Results: A score of 22.52 gives a sensitivity of 70% and a specificity of 78%. This value is providing a more coherent diagnosis with the MMSE as compared to the other cut-offs presented in the other available validations. No differences were found between patients in terms of age and gender, suggesting a general uniformity of the selected sample.

Conclusions: Deepening the coherence in MCI diagnosis between MMSE and the other MoCA's scoring considered, our new cut-off seems reasonably better than previous Italian validation on an elderly population in matching MMSE classification.

Objective: Child maltreatment (CM) is a recognized public health problem, and epidemiologic data suggest that it is a widespread phenomenon, albeit with widely varying estimates. Indeed, CM as well as child abuse (CA) and neglect (CN) are complex phenomena that are difficult to study for several reasons, including terminological and definitional problems that pose a hurdle to estimating epidemiological rates. Therefore, the main aim of this umbrella review is to revise recent review data on the epidemiology of CM, CA, and CN. A second aim was to revise the definitions used.

Method: A systematic search of three databases was performed in March 2022. Recent reviews (published in the last 5 years: 2017-March 2022) addressing the epidemiological rates of CM, CA, and/or CN were included.

Results: Of the 314 documents retrieved by the selected search strategy, the eligibility assessment yielded a total of 29 eligible documents. Because of the great heterogeneity among them, a qualitative rather than a quantitative synthesis was performed.

Conclusions: The data from this umbrella review show that the different age groups, methods, and instruments used in the literature to collect the data on the epidemiology of CM make it difficult to compare the results. Although definitions appear to be quite homogeneous, CM categorization varies widely across studies. Furthermore, this umbrella review shows that the CM reviews considered do not examine some particular forms of CM such as parental overprotection. The results are discussed in detail throughout the paper.

Objective: a spectrum model of psychopathology has allowed, in recent years, to recognize the subclinical or sub-threshold symptomatology that may be associated with full-blown mental disorders. The conceptualization of a panic - agoraphobic spectrum was developed in consideration of the substantial clinical heterogeneity revealed by studies on panic disorder with or without agoraphobia. The current study aims to determine the psychometric properties of the Panic Agoraphobic Spectrum - Short Version (PAS-SV), a new questionnaire designed to identify the spectrum of panic - agoraphobic symptoms.

Method: 42 subjects with panic disorder or agoraphobia (PAD) according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), 41 subjects with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and 60 healthy controls (HC) were recruited from the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Pisa and assessed with the SCID-5, the Panic Disorder Severity Scale (PDSS) and the PAS-SV.

Results: PAS-SV demonstrated a high level of internal consistency and the test-retest reliability for total and domain scores was excellent. PAS-SV domain scores were positively and significantly correlated with each other (p < 0.001), with Pearson's coefficients ranging from 0.771 to 0.943. All the PAS-SV domain scores were highly correlated with the PAS-SV total score. The correlation coefficients between PAS-SV and alternative measures of panic - agoraphobic symptoms appeared all significant and positive. Significant differences among diagnostic groups on both PAS-SV domains and total scores were found. PAS-SV total score increased significantly and progressively from HC, to the ASD up to the PA group.

Conclusions: The PAS-SV showed excellent internal consistency and test-retest reliability and strong convergent validity with alternative dimensional measures of PA. The questionnaire performed differently among the three diagnostic groups, with an increasing score gradient from HC to patients with ASD to the PA group.

Objective: Body dysmorphic symptoms are one of the most common problems in adolescent girls. The experience of security or insecurity in childhood attachment can be one of the most important fundamental factors affecting the body image and, consequently, body dysmorphic symptoms. However, the mediator role of the body image in the relationship between body dysmorphic and interpersonal attachment styles has not been studied in previous researches. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the mediating role of body image in the relationship between interpersonal attachment styles and body dysmorphic symptoms.

Method: In a cross-sectional research, 250 adolescent girls from Baqer al-Uloom School in Tabriz, were selected by convenient sampling method. Then, The Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire-Appearance Scales (MBSRQ-AS), Body Dysmorphic Metacognitive Questionnaire (BDMCQ) and Collins and Reid's Attachment Styles Scale (RAAS) were used to data collection.

Results: The findings showed ambivalent attachment style was positively related to body image (β=-0.91, p<0.01) The direct effect of ambivalent attachment style on body dysmorphic symptom is significant (β=0.76, p<0.01). The pathway between body image and body dysmorphic symptom is negatively significant (β= -0.75, p<0.01). Also, the hypothesized model has an acceptable goodness-of-fit.

Conclusions: Based on the results, it can be said that in interventions, it is necessary to pay attention to the important role of interpersonal attachment styles and body image in body dysmorphic symptoms.

Objective: Problematic social media use is becoming a significant social and clinical concern, and there is growing research interest in the psychological factors involved, such as personality predispositions and the fear of missing out (FOMO). The present study investigated both the dark triad (DT, namely, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) and trait emotion intelligence (trait EI) in relation to the problematic use of technology and social media engagement and the mediating role of FOMO.

Method: A total of 788 people between 18 and 35 years old (M = 24.22; SD = 3.91; 75% women) were surveyed.

Results: The results showed that social media engagement was positively related to problematic social media use and negatively related to trait EI. In addition, problematic social media use was positively related to DT and negatively related to trait EI. Fear of missing out was positively related to social media engagement, problematic social media use, and DT, and negatively related to trait EI. Fear of missing out had a mediating effect on the relationship between personality dimensions, problematic social media use, and social media engagement.

Conclusions: The extent to which personality traits may underpin problematic use of social media and the practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Objective: Disgust is a basic emotion evolved to safeguard our omnivorous species from contagion. Although the factors eliciting disgust typically involve concerns related to physical contamination, physical disgust responses are also prompted by moral transgressions, (i.e. cannibalism, pedophilia, betrayal). The link between the general propensity to experience disgust (i.e. "Disgust Sensitivity") and morality, in particular in the deontological domain, is supported by an increasing amount of data on clinical and non-clinical sample. Evolutionistic explanations of this link posit that disgust evolved to indicate the presence of a threat to the integrity of the individual not only in the physical domain but also in the social and moral domain.In addition to the evolutionary point of view, this link could also be better investigated in terms of individual development. To the best of our knowledge, literature is scarce regarding which early experiences are associated to high DS. Therefore, this study aims to explore the content of early memories associated with disgust. Based on the strict link between disgust and morality, we hypothesized an association between DS and early memories of moral criticism.

Method: 60 non-clinical participants filled in measures of DS. They were then presented with an auditory disgust induction, after which they recalled early memories through the technique of the "affect bridge". 10 independent raters assessed the emotional content of the memories on visual-analogical scales.

Results: Results showed a positive association between disgust sensitivity and the propensity to experience deontological guilt. There was also a significant positive association between disgust sensitivity and moral memories, in particular relating to early experiences of being the object of contempt, moral criticism, anger, and of being held responsible.

Conclusions: These data directly support the centrality of early morally-loaded interpersonal experiences in the development of DS, confirming the link between disgust and morality also at the level of individual historical development.

Objective: health care workers (HCWs) represent a vulnerable group in the COVID-19 pandemic, given the exposure to greater risk and higher levels of work-related stress. Neurofeedback (NF) has shown to be effective in the treatment of stress-related symptoms. We aimed to assess the effectiveness of an alpha-increase NF protocol for the treatment of acute stress symptoms in HCWs exposed to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Method: eighteen medical doctors on duty during the COVID-19 health emergency underwent an intensive NF alpha-increase protocol. The mean alpha wave values were recorded at the beginning (T0) and at the last day of stimulation (T1). Rapid Stress Assessment: Italian version; Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI); Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and Brief-COPE were administered as psychometric assessment.

Results: a significant increase in alpha wave values and a significant reduction of the PSQI scores from T0 to T1 were found.

Conclusions: NF alpha-increase protocol showed promising results in terms of stress modulation, sleep quality improvement, and safety in a pilot sample of HCWs.