The psychosomatic spectrum: a clinical-analytic survey of the relationship between eating disorders and migraine.

Objective: To evaluate if somatic symptoms of Eating Disorders and Migraine reflect similar aspects of personality and temperament.

Methods: The clinical notes of 27 migraineurs and of 26 ED outpatients were reviewed; 40 medical students of the University of Perugia were recruited as healthy controls. TCI, DMI, SCID-II and TAS-20 were used.

Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry-from theory to clinical practice: an observational study in a general hospital.

Background: To investigate significant association between various clinical and extra-clinical factors brought out the activities of Consultation-Liaison Service.

Methods: Data from all psychiatric consultations for patients admitted to the Perugia General Hospital and carried out over a 1-year period (from July the 1st 2009 to June the 30th 2010) were collected by a structured clinical report including: socio-demographic features, features of referrals, features of back-referrals. T-test, Mann-Whitney U-test, χ(2)-test and Fischer's were statistically used.

Schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder: from comorbidity to schizo-obsessive disorder.

Current genetic, neurobiological, clinical-descriptive and pharmacological data about obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) and/or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in schizophrenia hypothesize that schizophrenia combined with OCD is more than a mere comorbidity. To prove this hypothesis, “dimensional diagnosis”, based on the identification of a dysfunctional area common to different clinical cases, should replace “categorical diagnosis”, that focuses on discrete parameters that define specific disorders. It is our hope that the DSM-V will make reference to principles based on psychopathological “spectra” because these reflect the integration of pharmacotherapeutic, descriptive and etiopathogenetic aspects (genotypes common to various disorders, temperamental predispositions, neurobiological and chemical alteration).

[Psychosomatic approach to patients with headache: alternative or integrated diagnoses?].

Each person has an inseparable body-mind unity, with psychic factors that can also manifest themselves through changes in the functions of the body, and with changing somatic states that contribute to mental experience. This explains why somatic symptoms fall within psychiatry. When a patient complains about physical symptoms, it is essentially an integrated, multidisciplinary diagnosis which is used to identify the various factors (biological and psychological) which worsen the disorder, and a psychiatric dimensional approach is used to integrate the descriptive symptomatic diagnosis with the psychostructural diagnosis.

Medication-overuse headache and personality: a controlled study by means of the MMPI-2.

Objective: The main aim of this study involves comparing the personality profiles of patients with medication-overuse headache (MOH) and episodic headaches, in order to elucidate the role of personality characteristics, according to one of the most widely used and validated personality assessment tool: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2).

Background: Many studies have assessed the personality of headache patients by means of MMPI-2 only using clinical and content scales. In this study the supplementary scales were also used as they evaluate different aspects of personality, particularly broad personality characteristics, generalized emotional distress and behavioral dyscontrol.