Parents' Perspective of Antibiotic Usage in Children: A Nationwide Survey in Italy.

Background: Antibiotics represent the most widely prescribed drugs in children worldwide, both in hospital and community settings. A comprehensive approach to understanding the reasons and determinants of antibiotic prescription in the pediatric age is needed. This study aimed to assess parents' attitudes and perspectives about antibiotic use.

Validity of Social Cognition Measures in the Clinical Services for Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The current study evaluated three social cognition (SC) tests for their clinical utility in aiding autism diagnosis. To do so, we compared the performance of 86 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 68 typically developing (TD) children, all aged from 4 to 10 years old, on three SC tasks [the Social Information Processing Interview (SIPI), the Comic Strip Task (CST), and the children's version of the Eyes Task] and calculated threshold scores that best differentiated the two groups. While difficulties in these abilities appear to represent the "central core" of ASD, services have largely ignored SC tests when supporting autism diagnoses.

[Autism after an earthquake: the experience of L'Aquila (Central Italy) as a basis for an operative guideline].

People with autism, their families, and their specialised caregivers are a social group at high health risk after a disruptive earthquake. They need emergency assistance and immediate structured support according to definite protocols and quality standards. We recommend to establish national guidelines for taking-in-charge people with autism after an earthquake.

Facebook, quality of life, and mental health outcomes in post-disaster urban environments: the l'aquila earthquake experience.

Background: An understudied area of interest in post-disaster public health is individuals' use of social networks as a potential determinant of quality of life (QOL) and mental health outcomes. A population-based cross-sectional study was carried out to examine whether continual use of online social networking (Facebook) in an adult population following a massive earthquake was correlated with prevalence of depression and post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) and QOL outcomes.

Methods: Participants were a sample of 890 adults aged 25-54 who had been exposed to the L'Aquila earthquake of 2009.

A longitudinal study of quality of life of earthquake survivors in L'Aquila, Italy.

Background: People's well-being after loss resulting from an earthquake is a concern in countries prone to natural disasters. Most studies on post-earthquake subjective quality of life (QOL) have focused on the effects of psychological impairment and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on the psychological dimension of QOL. However, there is a need for studies focusing on QOL in populations not affected by PTSD or psychological impairment.