Family Functioning and Cohesion Scale: Validation of a Short Instrument for the Assessment of Intrafamily Relations.

Most available scales for assessing family relationships are lengthy. Our aim was to develop and validate the Family Functioning and Cohesion Scale (FFCS), a self-reported, short instrument consisting of 14 items. The FFCS was validated through its administration to 481 subjects via an online platform.

Impact of COVID-19 outbreak on subjective sleep during lockdown: relation with resilience characteristics.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic had a considerable impact on both the physical and mental health of people. Resilience is a psychological characteristic reflecting the ability to overcome or adapt to difficulties such as adversity, trauma, or extremely stressful situations. People with high resilience have been shown to exhibit lower levels of anxiety, stress and depression when faced with a stressful event.

Fine-mapping genomic loci refines bipolar disorder risk genes.

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a heritable mental illness with complex etiology. While the largest published genome-wide association study identified 64 BD risk loci, the causal SNPs and genes within these loci remain unknown. We applied a suite of statistical and functional fine-mapping methods to these loci, and prioritized 17 likely causal SNPs for BD.

The European Insomnia Guideline: An update on the diagnosis and treatment of insomnia 2023.

Progress in the field of insomnia since 2017 necessitated this update of the European Insomnia Guideline. Recommendations for the diagnostic procedure for insomnia and its comorbidities are: clinical interview (encompassing sleep and medical history); the use of sleep questionnaires and diaries (and physical examination and additional measures where indicated) (A). Actigraphy is not recommended for the routine evaluation of insomnia (C), but may be useful for differential-diagnostic purposes (A).

Action initiation and punishment learning differ from childhood to adolescence while reward learning remains stable.

Theoretical and empirical accounts suggest that adolescence is associated with heightened reward learning and impulsivity. Experimental tasks and computational models that can dissociate reward learning from the tendency to initiate actions impulsively (action initiation bias) are thus critical to characterise the mechanisms that drive developmental differences. However, existing work has rarely quantified both learning ability and action initiation, or it has relied on small samples.

Depression and driving.

We have recently published an article in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health presenting the results of our study on the driving behaviour of patients with depression.1 This is the first study conducted on the Greek population assessing the fitness-to-drive of patients with psychiatric disorders through the use of questionnaires and driving simulator. Similar studies in Greece have only been performed among patients with neurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease and mild cognitive impairment.

Driving Behaviour in Depression Based on Subjective Evaluation and Data from a Driving Simulator.

Road traffic collisions are a major issue for public health. Depression is characterized by mental, emotional and executive dysfunction, which may have an impact on driving behaviour. Patients with depression (N = 39) and healthy controls (N = 30) were asked to complete questionnaires and to drive on a driving simulator in different scenarios.

The potential of biomarkers for diagnosing insomnia: Consensus statement of the WFSBP Task Force on Sleep Disorders.

Objectives: Thus far, the diagnosis of insomnia is based on purely clinical criteria. Although a broad range of altered physiological parameters has been identified in insomniacs, the evidence to establish their diagnostic usefulness is very limited. Purpose of this WFSBP Task Force consensus paper is to systematically evaluate a series of biomarkers as potential diagnostic tools for insomnia.

Prevalence of Bullying and its Co-occurrence with Aggression and Mental Health Problems among Greek Adolescents Attending Urban Schools.

Background: Bullying is one widespread violence type that threatens adolescent's well-being in family, school, and neighborhood. This study aimed to estimate the percentages of the last 12 months bullying behaviors- types among Greek adolescents, and to identify the associations between these behaviors and adolescents' aggression and mental health- behavioral problems.

Study Design: A cross-sectional study.

Impaired Human Sexual and Erectile Function Affecting Semen Quality, in Obstructive Sleep Apnea: A Pilot Study.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a rising problem, with important implications for public health. Recent evidence has revealed a link between OSA and reduced male fertility. We investigated the association between OSA and sexual and erectile function, as well as semen quality, and the effect of treatment by continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP).

[Epidemiological indicators and correlations of adolescent aggression in an urban student population].

Adolescent aggression has received a wide and longtime attention in scientific research, because of the extent of the phenomenon in this age group and of the negative consequences it inflicts on affected adolescents, and their human environments. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to determine the proportion (of high levels) of aggressive behaviors (physical, verbal, and direct aggression, anger, and hostility) in an urban sample of adolescent students, as well as to investigate associations between the occurrence of these behaviors, and adolescents' characteristics and mental health problems. The sample consisted of 2050 students attending the second grade of 49 random selected High Schools and Senior High Schools of the Regional Unit of the Central Sector of Attica and Piraeus.

Differential association of cortisol with visual memory/learning and executive function in Bipolar Disorder.

The association of cortisol with cognition has been understudied in Bipolar Disorder (BD); available evidence is inconsistent while it is unknown whether cortisol's effects vary across neurocognitive domains implicating different brain structures. This study aimed to examine the association of cortisol with two cognitive tasks targeting visual memory and executive function (planning) in BD, related to the hippocampus and prefrontal lobe, respectively. Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) tasks targeting paired associative learning (PAL) and planning (Stockings of Cambridge; SOC) were administered to 60 BD type I patients.

Factor structure and psychometric properties of a new 39-item version of the Criteria for Recovery from Eating Disorders questionnaire (CRED-39).

Eating disorders (ED) are a group of mental disorders, which are quite difficult to treat. In studies on the recovery process of ED, patients' experience is rarely been taken into account. In addition, there seems to be a gap between patients' objective improvement, as assessed by clinicians, and patients' own subjective evaluation of their recovery.

Sex differences in psychiatric comorbidity and clinical presentation in youths with conduct disorder.

Background: Conduct disorder (CD) rarely occurs alone but is typically accompanied by comorbid psychiatric disorders, which complicates the clinical presentation and treatment of affected youths. The aim of this study was to investigate sex differences in comorbidity pattern in CD and to systematically explore the 'gender paradox' and 'delayed-onset pathway' hypotheses of female CD.

Methods: As part of the FemNAT-CD multisite study, semistructured clinical interviews and rating scales were used to perform a comprehensive phenotypic characterization of 454 girls and 295 boys with CD (9-18 years), compared to 864 sex- and age-matched typically developing controls.

Cortisol to Dehydroepiandrosterone Sulphate Ratio and Executive Function in Bipolar Disorder.

Introduction: Bipolar disorder (BD) is associated with impairment in cognitive domains such as verbal memory and executive functions. Very few studies have assessed dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate (DHEA-S) in BD and its relation to cognitive functioning despite evidence showing its regulatory effects on glucocorticoid action. The aim of our study was to explore the association of cortisol, DHEA-S, and cortisol to DHEA-S ratio with visuospatial memory and executive functioning in BD.

Positive and negative parenting in conduct disorder with high versus low levels of callous-unemotional traits.

Less is known about the relationship between conduct disorder (CD), callous-unemotional (CU) traits, and positive and negative parenting in youth compared to early childhood. We combined traditional univariate analyses with a novel machine learning classifier (Angle-based Generalized Matrix Learning Vector Quantization) to classify youth (N = 756; 9-18 years) into typically developing (TD) or CD groups with or without elevated CU traits (CD/HCU, CD/LCU, respectively) using youth- and parent-reports of parenting behavior. At the group level, both CD/HCU and CD/LCU were associated with high negative and low positive parenting relative to TD.

Converging Psychoanalytic and Neurobiological Understanding of Autism: Promise for Integrative Therapeutic Approaches.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are a group of heterogeneous neu-rodevelopmental conditions characterized by deficits in social communication and social interaction and restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviors, interests, or activities. For many years, psychoanalysis and neurobiology have been in opposite camps regarding the understanding of autism in terms of causation and treatment. This paper aims to highlight converging points between neurobiological and psychodynamic understanding of autism, which could be useful in designing more effective early interventions.

Genome-wide association study identifies eight risk loci and implicates metabo-psychiatric origins for anorexia nervosa.

Characterized primarily by a low body-mass index, anorexia nervosa is a complex and serious illness, affecting 0.9-4% of women and 0.3% of men, with twin-based heritability estimates of 50-60%.

Investigating Sex Differences in Emotion Recognition, Learning, and Regulation Among Youths With Conduct Disorder.

Objective: Conduct disorder (CD) is a serious neurodevelopmental disorder marked by notably higher prevalence rates for boys than girls. Converging evidence suggests that CD is associated with impairments in emotion recognition, learning, and regulation. However, it is not known whether there are sex differences in the relationship between CD and emotion dysfunction.