The Life Project of People with Autism and Intellectual Disability: Investigating Personal Preferences and Values to Enhance Self-Determination.

People with autism and intellectual disabilities, much like individuals with typical development, share a fundamental right and aspiration to realise their own life projects. However, this natural pursuit is uniquely challenging for individuals with autism and intellectual disabilities due to their communication and adaptive hurdles. This growing need has prompted the development of a specific procedure for crafting life projects geared toward enhancing their quality of life.

Neurodevelopmental disorders and development of project of lifein a lifespan perspective: between habilitation and quality of life.

For some years, the term "project of life" has become widely used in the field of neurodevelopmental disorders, and, at the same time, it has begun to make its way in many social and health planning documents. However, beyond its relatively widespread use, this term does not yet possess an adequate and shared frame of the main underlying decision-making processes. In particular, there is a need to identify the crucial questions for orienting the choice of goals within the adolescent transition, which represents the complex hinge between childhood and adulthood.

Stress and wellbeing among professionals working with people with neurodevelopmental disorders. Review and intervention perspectives.

Supporting individuals with NDD is extremely demanding, with significant exposure to critical contexts and events, and painful ongoing experiences. Stress and burnout condition is a main concern with growing interest in research, despite the lack of consensus on theoretical explanatory models and modification standards.The paper provides an up-to-date review of risk factors and involved processes, and presents evidence-based procedures and protocols to implement effective preventive actions addressing both organizational and individual factors.

Behavioral Approaches to Assessment and Early Intervention for Severe Problem Behavior in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

This article summarizes the literature on prevalence and establishment of severe problem behavior in individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, empirical support for applied behavior analysis, and evidence-based behavioral assessment and treatment procedures. Early intervention and prevention approaches and the role of the pediatrician with regard to surveillance, early intervention, and coordination of care are discussed.

A systematic review and evaluation of procedures for the induction of speech among persons with developmental disabilities.

Objective: Deficits in vocal speech are common among those with developmental disabilities. This review examines interventions for teaching speech to individuals who presented as nonspeaking, or with low levels of vocalizations at baseline, and assesses evidence-based practice in this area.

Methods: Systematic searches identified 78 studies suitable for inclusion.

Rumination as a predictor of drinking behaviour in alcohol abusers: a prospective study.

Aims: To investigate the role of depression and rumination in predicting drinking status (absence or presence of alcohol use) and level of alcohol use at 3, 6 and 12 months following a brief course of cognitive-behavioural therapy for alcohol abuse.

Methods: A total of 80 out-patients with a diagnosis of alcohol abuse completed measures of depression (Beck Depression Inventory), rumination (Ruminative Responses Scale) and alcohol use (Quantity-Frequency Scale).

Results: These indicated that rumination predicted drinking status and level of alcohol use at 3-, 6- and 12-month follow-up.

Drugs on the web; the Psychonaut 2002 EU project.

Purpose: Only a few formal assessments of websites with drug-related contents have been carried out. We aimed here at fostering collection and analysis of data from web pages related to information on consumption, manufacture and sales of psychoactive substances.

General Methods: An 8-language, two-engine, assessment of the information available in a purposeful sample of 1633 unique websites was carried out.

New trends in the cyber and street market of recreational drugs? The case of 2C-T-7 ('Blue Mystic').

2C-T-7 ('Blue Mystic'), an illicit compound which shows similarities with MDMA and other designer drugs, has been only occasionally identified in the EU, but discussion on the Internet between experimenters has recently grown significantly. We aimed at collecting together in a review the available information on 2C-T-7, both at the cyber and at the street market level. 2C-T-7 was first synthesized in 1986; its desired effects include both a sense of empathy and of well-being.

Importance of cyberspace for the assessment of the drug abuse market: preliminary results from the Psychonaut 2002 project.

What do therapy and cybertherapy need to take into account to be effective for the treatment of drug-related disorders? The Psychonaut 2002 project is aimed to create a new and updated Web-based tool, which will be based on evolving drug scenarios, in order to provide professionals from the drug addiction field with easily accessible and reliable information. The drug abuse settings available on the Web will be described and the methodology will be discussed. Preliminary results of a search on MDMA and MDMA-like substances confirm that it is possible both to identify emerging trends and to provide information for prevention and appropriate intervention.