Riv Psichiatr
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Demoralization and depressive symptoms are very common in chronic organic diseases. The aim of the present study is to evaluate reliability and psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Demoralization Scale (DS) in patients with advanced cancer. ⋯ Results provide further evidence that the DS is a valid and reliable instrument of high clinical relevance in patients with advanced cancer and confirm the hypothesis of the ontological difference between demoralization and depression.
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The structure of the US legal system, which relies on the presence of different courts to provide for the impartial administration of justice, both civil and criminal is discussed. Therefore, all the steps to conviction or acquittal of the American criminal trial, are taken into consideration. ⋯ Another important procedure in the US trial is the jury selection (voir dire), 12 jurors: 6 for the defense and 6 for the prosecution. In Italy it was observed that the autonomy of the police would squeeze the steering function of the prosecutor, and the practice of "under cover" investigation has granted an extension of police activity.
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Bereavement, in the form of the loss of a significant attachment figure to death, disrupts the self-narratives of survivors, and typically launches them into an unsought quest for meaning in the loss as well as in their changed lives. A growing body of research on diverse groups – bereaved parents, young people, elders – suffering loss through both natural and violent death, documents the link between inability to find meaning in the experience and the intensity of complicated grief they suffer. This article reviews this literature, arguing that processes of sense-making and benefit-finding play a crucial role in bereavement adaptation for many of the bereaved, and accordingly that interventions that facilitate processes of meaning reconstruction can support effective psychotherapy for those struggling with intense and prolonged grief.
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Starting from the evidence that not all burn patients develop a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the aim of this overview was to describe variables, which favour the development of the disorder following to burn injury and to delineate directions for a treatment. ⋯ The literature underlines the importance of the individual vulnerability to the development of PTSD in burn patients, besides the experience itself of a traumatic event. These patients face particular and specific problems, therefore, with the purpose to develop a suitable intervention, it would be useful to appraise, besides the physical and psychosocial implications of the burn, the psychological characteristics of each patient, to articulate a treatment that may account for the complexity of the burn patient.
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Neurotrophins, particularly, NGF and BDNF are now well recognized to mediate a dizzying number of trophobiological effects, ranging from the Rita Levi-Montalcini's neurotrophic through immunotrophic to metabotrophic effects. These are implicated in the pathogenesis of various diseases including neuropsychiatric and cardiometabolic diseases, such as dementia, depression, type 2 diabetes and obesity that may express a common phenotype and coexistence. ⋯ Since NGF and BDNF also exerts various synaptotrophic effects involved in cognitive enhancement, this hypothesis might also be related to neuropsychiatric diseases such as dementia, depression, schizophrenia, autism, Rett syndrome, anorexia nervosa, and bulimia nervosa. Finally, NGF- and BDNF-based therapeutic approach, including ampakines, antidepressants, selective deacetylase inhibitors, statins, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma agonists, and "brain food" and calorie restriction, is outlined.