Publications by authors named "Martina Brandizzi"

Background: Despite concerns on mental health problems related to lockdowns, recent reports revealed a reduction in psychiatric admissions in Emergency Departments (ED) during the lockdown period compared with the previous year in several countries. Most of the existing studies focused on the first lockdown not considering the different phases of the COVID-19 crisis. The present study aimed to analyze differences in ED admission for psychiatric consultation during three different phases of the COVID-19 health crisis in Italy.

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This study investigates, using an online self-report questionnaire, adolescents' emotional reactions during the lockdown in a sample of 2105 secondary school students (aged 14-19) in Italy, Romania, and Croatia. We used a self-reported online questionnaire (answers on a 5-point scale or binary), composed of 73 questions investigating the opinions, feelings, and emotions of teenagers, along with sociodemographic information and measures of the exposure to lockdown. The survey was conducted online through a web platform in Italy (between 27 April and 15 June 2020), Romania, and Croatia (3 June and 2 July 2020).

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Although attenuated psychotic symptoms often occur for the first time during adolescence, studies focusing on adolescents are scarce. Attenuated psychotic symptoms form the criteria to identify individuals at increased clinical risk of developing psychosis. The study of individuals with these symptoms has led to the release of the DSM-5 diagnosis of Attenuated Psychosis Syndrome (APS) as a condition for further research.

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Bipolar disorder (BD) is a debilitating illness that often starts at an early age. Prevention of first and subsequent mood episodes, which are usually preceded by a period characterized by subthreshold symptoms is important. We compared demographic and clinical characteristics including severity and duration of subsyndromal symptoms across adolescents with three different bipolar-spectrum disorders.

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Aim: The effects of a negative interpersonal experience, such as bullying victimization in childhood and adolescence, can be strong and long lasting. Bullying victimization is associated with paranoid ideation and suspiciousness. Few studies have focused on personality traits of victims of bullying.

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Social and occupational impairments are present in the schizophrenia prodrome, and poor social functioning predicts transition to psychosis in Ultra-High Risk (UHR) individuals. We aimed to: 1) validate the Italian version of the Global Functioning: Social (GF: S) and Global Functioning: Role (GF: S) scales; 2) evaluate their association with UHR criteria. Participants were 12-21-years-old (age, mean=15.

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Background: Current early screeners for psychosis-risk states have still to prove ability in identifying at-risk individuals. Among screeners, the 92-item Prodromal Questionnaire (PQ-92) is often used. We aimed to assess the validity of its Italian translation in a large Italian adolescent and young adult help-seeking sample.

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Article Synopsis
  • Preliminary research indicates that patients with early psychosis and those at Ultra High Risk (UHR) may show "Truman symptoms" (TS), which are unique experiences not found in healthy controls.
  • This study involved 26 UHR participants and 14 matched healthy controls, examining the relationship between TS and various clinical features, such as depersonalization and self-disturbances.
  • Findings revealed that 50% of UHR subjects exhibited TS, which were significantly linked to higher levels of general psychopathology, but not to other assessed scales like CAARMS and SOFAS.
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Aim: "Liberiamo il futuro" (LIF) project was designed to assess psychological problems of adolescents and young adults and to identify individuals at high-risk for developing a psychosis through a collaboration between a University team, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services and Adult Mental Health Services. This paper presents the baseline demographic and clinical characteristics of the cohort, particularly the nature and severity of psychopathology.

Method: All help-seeking young people aged 12-35 years residing in the health district involved in LIF were invited to participate in the study and completed a battery of self- report and interviewer-administered measures of psychopathology and functioning at baseline.

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Background: The nosology of the psychosis high-risk state is controversial. Traditionally conceived as an 'at risk' state for the development of psychotic disorders, it is also conceptualised as a clinical syndrome associated with functional impairment.

Aims: To investigate meta-analytically the functional status of patients at high clinical risk for psychosis and its association with longitudinal outcomes.

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Objective: Self-rated attenuated psychotic-like experiences (APLEs) are increasingly used to screen for ultra-high-risk (UHR) across all ages. However, self-rated psychotic-like experiences (PLEs), in particular perception-related ones, were more frequent in children and adolescents, in which they possessed less clinical significance. We therefore explored the prevalence of different factors of APLEs in help-seeking adolescents, and their relationship with age, functioning and psychopathology.

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Aim: This study aimed to investigate if particular psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) subtypes were more likely to be associated with a series of socio-demographic variables, with alcohol abuse and with cannabis or illicit drug use. The idea is to further characterize different PLEs subtypes in order to discloud their individual nature.

Methods: A cross-sectional design was conducted on a sample of 997 university students aged between 19 and 26 years, which belonged to 4 faculties of 2 different universities.

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Introduction: The aims of this study are (i) to assess the drop-out rate in an outpatient sample with mood disorder diagnosis in a psychotherapy unit; (ii) to focus clinical and sociodemographic variables related with drop-out; (iii) to delineate a psychopathological profile of the dropping-out patient through the SCL-90-R and OPD scores.

Method: The sample of this study includes 90 depressive patients, which came to our service for a psychotherapy. The outcome is classified as drop-out and non drop-out.

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Unlabelled: AIM. The aim of this study was: (i) To identify socio-demographic and clinical data in a sample of inmates in the Criminal Mental Hospital (CMH) at Castiglione delle Stiviere; (ii) to assess the presence of characteristics which could foresee the commission of a crime of psychiatric interest; (iii) to assess the frequency of crime repetition.

Materials And Methods: This study was carried out on a sample of 38 patients.

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