First-episode Psychosis and Migration in Italy: Results from a Study in the Italian Mental Health Services (Pep-Ita Study).

Background: Migrants present high rates of psychosis. A better understanding of this phenomenon is needed.

Methods: We conducted a multicentre First-Episode Psychosis (FEP) prospective study over two years (January 2012-December 2013) to evaluate first-generation migrants presenting with FEP at the participating Community Mental Health Centers (CMHCs).

The role of gender, psycho-social factors and anthropological-cultural dimensions on pain in neurorehabilitation. Evidence and recommendations from the Italian Consensus Conference on Pain in Neurorehabilitation.

Pain is frequent in patients undergoing neurorehabilitation, but there is a number of still unanswered questions on this topic. The Italian Consensus Conference on Pain in Neurorehabilitation (ICCPN) was constituted with the purpose to identify the best practices that can be used in this context. In this article we summarize the existing evidence and recommendations provided by the ICCPN about the role of gender, psycho-social factors and anthropological-cultural dimensions on pain in neurorehabilitation.

Bilingualism, Language Disorders and Intercultural Families in Contemporary Italy: Family Relations, Transmission of Language and Representations of Otherness.

This study aims to show how language disorders in children affect language transmission and the mixedness experience in intercultural families. To this end, it adopts a qualitative method of study based on the administration of ad hoc interviews to intercultural couples who consulted our Child Neuropsychiatry Service because of language disorders in their children. One of the main consequences, when the child of an intercultural couple presents a language disorder and a diagnostic process has to be initiated, may be interruption of the transmission of the second language, especially if it is the mother's language.

First-episode psychosis and migration in Italy (PEP-Ita migration): a study in the Italian mental health services.

Background: It has been frequently reported a higher incidence of psychotic disorders in immigrants than in native populations. There is, however, a lack of knowledge about risk factors which may explain this phenomenon. A better understanding of the causes of psychosis among first-generation migrants is highly needed, particularly in Italy, a country with a recent massive migration.

Support and psychotherapy.

In recent years the psychiatric and psychoanalytical literature has expressed increasing interest in supportive therapy, which has long been considered rather disparagingly as a "lesser form" of psychotherapy. At the same time there has been much reflection on the significance and role of support in various therapeutic settings, outside the formal psychotherapeutic context. A review of updated literature shows, on the one hand, a general appreciation of the idea of support, as an acknowledged component of any therapeutic action.