Prevalence of autistic traits and their relationships with other psychopathological domains in young adults seeking psychiatric attention: a cluster analysis.

Background: Nearly two-thirds of individuals with a mental disorder start experiencing symptoms during adolescence or early adulthood, and the onset of a mental disorder during this critical life stage strongly predicts adverse socioeconomic and health outcomes. Subthreshold manifestations of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), also called autistic traits (ATs), are known to be associated with a higher vulnerability to the development of other psychiatric disorders. This study aimed to assess the presence of ATs in a population of young adults seeking specialist assistance and to evaluate the study population across various psychopathological domains in order to determine their links with ATs.

Updating Prospective Self-Efficacy Beliefs About Cardiac Interoception in Anorexia Nervosa: An Experimental and Computational Study.

Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) typically hold altered beliefs about their body that they struggle to update, including global, prospective beliefs about their ability to know and regulate their body and particularly their interoceptive states. While clinical questionnaire studies have provided ample evidence on the role of such beliefs in the onset, maintenance, and treatment of AN, psychophysical studies have typically focused on perceptual and 'local' beliefs. Across two experiments, we examined how women at the acute AN (N = 86) and post-acute AN state (N = 87), compared to matched healthy controls (N = 180) formed and updated their self-efficacy beliefs retrospectively (Experiment 1) and prospectively (Experiment 2) about their heartbeat counting abilities in an adapted heartbeat counting task.

Early identification of risk for eating disorders in Italian secondary school students: a cross-sectional study.

Aim: Eating disorders are major illnesses that primarily affect adolescents and young adults and seriously threaten public health. Early identification of at-risk individuals and timely initiation of treatment is crucial to improve outcomes. The Inside Out Institute Screener (IOI-S) is a rapid self-administration screening tool for high-risk and early-stage eating disorders.

Forearm bisection task suggests an alteration in body schema in patients with functional movement disorders (motor conversion disorders).

Objectives: To explore potential alterations of the Body Schema, the implicit sensorimotor representation of one's own body, in patients with Functional Movement Disorders (FMD, Motor Conversion Disorders), characterized by neurological symptoms of altered voluntary motor function that cannot be explained by typical medical conditions. This investigation is prompted by the potential dissociation from their reportedly intact sense of ownership.

Methods: 10 FMD patients and 11 healthy controls (HC) underwent the Forearm Bisection Task, aimed at assessing perceived body metrics, which consists in asking the subject, blindfolded, to repeatedly point at the perceived middle point of their dominant forearm with the index finger of their contralateral hand, and a psychometric assessment for anxiety, depression, alexithymia, and tendency to dissociation.

Longitudinal outcomes of a work inclusion program in mental health departments in the city of Milan.

Background: Work functioning impairment is a key diagnostic and prognostic criterion in patients with psychiatric disorders and work inclusion is a major goal of their therapeutic pathway. Since 2009, the Regional Innovative Program (PIR) TR106, promoted by ASST Fatebenefratelli-Sacco of Milan in collaboration with other Departments of Mental Health and Addictions (DSMDs) in the town of Milan (Italy), has been developing the employment inclusion of psychiatric patients.

Aims: The objective of this study is to evaluate its outcomes over 8 years of observation.

Elderly Onset of Functional Motor Disorders: Clinical Correlates from the Italian Registry.

Background: Functional motor disorders (FMD) are a frequent neurological condition affecting patients with movement disorders. Commonly described in younger adults, their manifestation can be also associated to an elderly onset.

Objective: To assess the prevalence and describe the clinical manifestations of FMD with elderly and younger onset and their relationship with demographical and clinical variables.

Autistic traits, sensory sensitivity and eating disturbances in a sample of young adults referring to a generalized mental health clinic.

Purpose: The relationship between autistic traits and eating disturbances has been given considerable attention over the last decades. The rise of a dimensional approach to psychopathology has expanded the way we think about autism, acknowledging that subthreshold autistic manifestations span across the general population and are more pronounced in psychiatric patients. Here we investigated the prevalence of eating disorders and its potential relationship with autistic traits and sensory sensitivity in a group of patients who were referred for the first time to a mental health outpatient clinic, without a formal diagnosis yet.

Traits of narcissistic vulnerability in adults with autism spectrum disorders without intellectual disabilities.

The relationship between Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), considering the dimensions of narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability, represents an important differential diagnosis and potential ground of comorbidity, since both conditions show high grades of pervasiveness, a life-long course, ego-syntonic traits, and difficulties in building up and sustaining interpersonal relationships Although the co-diagnosis rates, according to the categorical criteria in use, are limited (0%-6.4%), it is common to encounter diagnostic doubts in clinical practice. Here we investigated the dimensions of narcissistic vulnerability and grandiosity in a sample of 87 adults diagnosed with ASD without intellectual disabilities through the administration of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory-52 Items (PNI-52).

Long-term Memory of Sensory Experiences from the First Pregnancy, its Peri-partum and Post-partum in Women with Autism Spectrum Disorders without Intellectual Disabilities: A Retrospective Study.

Purpose: To explore the recalled experience of pregnancy and motherhood in women diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) without intellectual disabilities, focusing on sensory perceptions and mood.

Methods: We retrospectively evaluated, through an ad-hoc structured interview, the sensory sensitivity during the pre-partum, the peri-partum, and the post-partum of thirty-three mothers with ASD and thirty-two neurotypical mothers. Participants also underwent a psychometric assessment about autistic traits, general sensory sensitivity, and post-partum depressive symptomatology.

Toward an Increased Attention on ADHD Symptoms and Traits in Young Adults: Prevalence Data From Screening Tools in a Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic.

Objective: to analyze the prevalence of ADHD symptoms and traits in a heterogeneous clinical psychiatric sample of young adults (aged 18-24 years old), who referred to a specialized outpatient clinic for various psychiatric and psychological disturbances.

Method: 259 participants completed three validated self-report screening questionnaires for ADHD: the Wender Utah Rating Scale (WURS), the Adult Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Self-Report Screening Scale for DSM-5 (ASRS-5), and the Conners' adult ADHD rating scale (CAARS).

Results: 12.

Body appearance values modulate risk aversion in eating restriction.

The understanding of eating disorders is hindered by the lack of integration between existing psychosocial and neurobiological approaches. We address this problem by developing a novel transdiagnostic and computational approach to eating restriction decisions. We first validated a novel paradigm which extends an established monetary risk task to involve body stimuli with psychosocial values.

Glutamatergic dysfunction, neuroplasticity, and redox status in the peripheral blood of patients with motor conversion disorders (functional movement disorders): a first step towards potential biomarkers discovery.

Functional movement disorders (FMD) are characterized by the presence of neurological symptoms that cannot be explained by typical neurological diseases or other medical conditions. First evidence showed that, compared to healthy controls (CTR), FMD patients presented increased levels of glutamate+glutamine in the anterior cingulate cortex/medial prefrontal cortex, and decreased levels of glutamate in the cerebrospinal fluid, suggesting that a glutamatergic dysfunction might play a role in FMD pathophysiology. In this study, 12 FMD patients and 20 CTR were recruited and underwent venous blood sampling and urine collection: levels of glutamate, BDNF, dopamine, oxidative stress, creatinine, neopterin, and uric acid were analyzed.

First episode psychosis during the Covid-19 pandemic in Milan, Italy: Diagnostic outcomes at 1-year follow-up.

An influence of the Covid-19 pandemic on First Episode Psychosis (FEP) has been hypothesized. We previously reported an increase of FEP during the early stages of the pandemic in Milan, Italy. Here we report a 1-year follow-up of the same cohort and comparison with a FEP cohort from 2019.

Data-driven clustering of combined Functional Motor Disorders based on the Italian registry.

Introduction: Functional Motor Disorders (FMDs) represent nosological entities with no clear phenotypic characterization, especially in patients with multiple (combined FMDs) motor manifestations. A data-driven approach using cluster analysis of clinical data has been proposed as an analytic method to obtain non-hierarchical unbiased classifications. The study aimed to identify clinical subtypes of combined FMDs using a data-driven approach to overcome possible limits related to "a priori" classifications and clinical overlapping.

Sense of body ownership and body agency in schizophrenia.

Recent research suggests that embodiment sensations (sense of body ownership and sense of body agency) are altered in schizophrenia. Using a mirror box illusion setup, we tested if the anomalous embodiment experience depends on deficient processing of visuomotor synchrony, disrupted processing of movement mode, or both. The task required participants to press a lever with their index while looking at the image of the experimenter's hand moving on a similar lever.

Hypermobile spectrum disorders symptoms in patients with functional neurological disorders and autism spectrum disorders: A preliminary study.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and functional neurological disorders (FNDs) share some clinical characteristics such as alexithymia, sensory sensitivity and interoceptive issues. Recent evidence shows that both the disorders present symptoms compatible with a diagnosis of hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and hypermobile spectrum disorders (hEDS/HSD), a heterogeneous group of heritable connective tissue disorders characterized by joint hypermobility, skin hyperextensibility, and tissue fragility. Here we compared the prevalence of hEDS/HSD-related symptoms in a group of patients with FNDs, of people with ASDs without intellectual disabilities, and a non-clinical comparison group (NC).

The Psychological Impact of COVID-19 among a Sample of Italian Adults with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Follow-Up Study.

The strict lockdowns imposed to contain the COVID-19 pandemic brought an increase in levels of stress, anxiety, and depression in the general population. However, in a previous study, our group found that individuals with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders (HF-ASD) reported an increase in their psychological wellbeing and a decrease in their daily tiredness, in relation to the social distancing measures imposed during the first Italian lockdown (between March and May 2020). In this follow-up study, conducted during the "second wave" of COVID-19, we included the same group of individuals with HF-ASD and evaluated their levels of stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD-related symptoms, tiredness, and perceived wellbeing; moreover, we compared our results to the ones we obtained during the first lockdown on the same population.

Clinical overlap between functional neurological disorders and autism spectrum disorders: a preliminary study.

Functional neurological disorders (FNDs) and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) share common features in terms of deficits in emotion regulation and recognition, sensory sensitivity, proprioception and interoception. Nevertheless, few studies have assessed their overlap. We recruited 21 patients with FNDs, 30 individuals with ASDs without intellectual disabilities and 45 neurotypical adults (NA).