Publications by authors named "Zerbinati L"

Background: Nearly half of subjects after COVID-19 still experience symptoms after 12 weeks, as described in the Post-Covid Syndrome (PCS). Other than the physical alterations perceived, mental health disorders have been frequently reported. Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) showed beneficial effects on psychological well-being in patients with respiratory dysfunctions, but they have been rarely tested in severe COVID-19 survivors.

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Demoralization comprises multiple dimensions. Among them, Subjective Incompetence (SI) is the perception of being incapable of appropriate action in demanding circumstances. SI may be an early sign of demoralization preceding hopelessness, thus we aimed at integrating items related to Subjective Incompetence into the clinical assessment of demoralization.

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Objectives: Disclosing information on diagnosis, prognosis and treatment is a delicate process in oncology, although awareness levels have over time increased in people with cancer. However, individual characteristics should be considered when communicating difficult information. We conducted a multicentric study to explore the moderating role of coping styles on the relationship between information about cancer, quality of life and psychological distress.

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Gait disorders are the most frequent symptoms associated to multiple sclerosis (MS). Robot-assisted gait training (RAGT) in people with MS (PwMS) has been proposed as a possible effective treatment option for severe motor disability without significant superiority when compared to intensive overground gait training (OGT). Furthermore, RAGT at high intensity may enhance fatigue and spasticity.

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Article Synopsis
  • Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a well-supported treatment for severe depression, but its neural mechanisms are not well understood; this review examines changes in cortical thickness (CT) due to ECT based on structural MRI studies.
  • Ten studies were analyzed, revealing that ECT significantly increases CT in brain regions like the temporal, insular, and frontal areas in patients with unipolar or bipolar depression; however, inconsistencies in sample sizes and study designs limit the applicability of the findings.
  • While the results suggest ECT may enhance CT and possibly affect treatment outcomes, further research with larger samples and better controls is needed to clarify the relationship between CT changes and clinical response.
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Introduction: Psychosocial factors frequently occur in kidney transplant recipients (KTRs), leading to behavioral alterations and reduced therapeutic adherence. However, the burden of psychosocial disorders on costs for KTRs is unknown. The aim of the study is to identify predictors of healthcare costs due to hospital admissions and emergency department access in KTRs.

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Fabry disease (FD) is a rare genetic disorder caused by a deficiency in the α-galactosidase A enzyme, which results in the globotriaosylceramide accumulation in many organs, including the kidneys. Nephropathy is a major FD complication that can progress to end-stage renal disease if not treated early. Although enzyme replacement therapy and chaperone therapy are effective, other treatments such as ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers can also provide nephroprotective effects when renal damage is also established.

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Objectives: Death anxiety (DA), a condition characterized by fear, angst, or panic related to the awareness of one's own death, is commonly observed in advanced cancer patients. The aim of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Death and Dying Distress Scale (DADDS-IT) in a sample of patients with advanced cancer.

Methods: The sample included 200 Italian advanced cancer patients meeting eligibility criteria to access palliative care.

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Purpose: Violence against healthcare professionals has become an emergency in many countries. Literature in this area has mainly focused on nurses while there are less studies on physicians, whose alterations in mental health and burnout have been linked to higher rates of medical errors and poorer quality of care. We summarized peer-reviewed literature and examined the epidemiology, main causes, consequences, and areas of intervention associated with workplace violence perpetrated against physicians.

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Purpose Of Review: This review will cover the most relevant findings on the use of machine learning (ML) techniques in the field of non-affective psychosis, by summarizing the studies published in the last three years focusing on illness detection and treatment.

Recent Findings: Multiple ML tools that include mostly supervised approaches such as support vector machine, gradient boosting, and random forest showed promising results by applying these algorithms to various sources of data: socio-demographic information, EEG, language, digital content, blood biomarkers, neuroimaging, and electronic health records. However, the overall performance, in the binary classification case, varied from 0.

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Introduction: Conducted under the auspices of the Italian Society of Consultation Liaison Psychiatry (SIPC) the aim of this study was to describe the characteristics of Consultation Liaison Psychiatry (CLP) activity in Italy (SIPC-2-2018) over the past 20 years by comparing with data from the first Italian nation-wide study (SIPC-1-1998).

Methods: We collected data on CLP visits of 3,943 patients from 10 Italian hospitals over a period of 1 year. Data were compared with those from the SIPC-1 1998 study (4,183 participants).

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Objective: Cognitive performance in Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is frequently impaired and related to functional outcomes. Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) may exert its effects on MDD acting both on depressive symptoms and neurocognition. Furthermore, cognitive status could predict the therapeutic response of depressive symptoms to rTMS.

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Article Synopsis
  • Italy faced two severe lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, first in April 2020 and then in November 2020, prompting a study on the mental health impacts of these restrictions.
  • The study included 116 outpatients from each lockdown period and utilized various psychiatric evaluation tools, revealing that approximately 47.4% in April and 50% in November showed significant trauma-related clinical scores.
  • The findings indicated persistent high levels of psychological distress and a phenomenon termed "pandemic fatigue," stressing the need for accessible community mental health services, especially for vulnerable groups.
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Distress associated with physical illness is a well-known risk factor for adverse illness course in general hospitals. Understanding the factors contributing to it should be a priority and among them dysfunctional illness perception and poor sleep quality may contribute to it. As poor sleep quality is recognised as a major risk factor for health problems, we aimed to study its association with illness perception and levels of distress during hospitalisation.

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Background: Type-D (distressed) personality has not been prospectively explored for its association with psychosocial distress symptoms in breast cancer patients.

Objective: The objective of the study was to test the hypothesis that Type-D personality can be associated with psychosocial distress variables in cancer over a 2-point period (6 month-follow-up).

Aims: The aim of the study was to analyze the role of Type-D personality in relation to anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress symptoms, general distress, and maladaptive coping among cancer patients.

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Introduction: Insomnia is emerging as a modifiable major risk factor for mental and physical problems, including cancer, and it may contribute to cancer-related fatigue and depression. Since both fatigue and depression may favor insomnia as well, we may hypothesize a self-reinforcing feedback loop among these factors in cancer.

Methods: With the aim of discussing this hypothesis, PubMed, PsycINFO, and Embase electronic databases were searched for literature published according to the PRISMA method with several combinations of terms such as "insomnia" and "cancer" and "fatigue" and "depression".

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Cognitive deficits are common in borderline personality disorder (BPD) and appear to be associated with psychopathology, functioning and outcome. The availability of a cognitive screening instrument could be of use in clinical settings in order to assess neurocognition in BPD patients. The Screen for Cognitive Impairment for Psychiatry (SCIP) proved to be reliable in different psychiatric populations, but it has not yet been validated in personality disorders.

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Although kidney transplant can lead to psychiatric disorders, psychosocial syndromes and demoralization, a positive post-traumatic growth (PTG) can occur in kidney transplant recipients (KTRs). However, the PTG-Inventory (PTGI), a reliable tool to measure PTG is scarcely used to explore the effect of this stressful event in KTRs. Thus, the purpose of our study was to assess the level of PTG and its correlation with demoralization, physical and emotional symptoms or problems via network analysis in KTRs.

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Late-life depression has multiple, heterogeneous clinical presentations. The aim of the study was to identify higher-order homogeneous clinical features (symptom complexes), while accounting for their potential causal interactions within the network approach to psychopathology. We analyzed cross-sectional data from community-dwelling adults aged 65-85 years recruited by the European MentDis_ICF65+ study (n = 2623, mean age 74, 49% females).

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Objective: To examine knowledge about, perception of and current risk factors for cancer, among patients with severe mental illness (SMI) and to compare these variables with patients without SMI.

Methods: A series of patients affected by SMI (i.e.

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Objective: To examine cancer-related mortality in patients with severe mental disorders (SMI) in the Emilia Romagna (ER) Region, Northern Italy, during the period 2008-2017 and compare it with the regional population.

Methods: We used the ER Regional Mental Health Registry identifying all patients aged ≥18 years who had received an ICD-9CM system diagnosis of SMI (i.e.

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Introduction: Little consideration is given to the referral and uptake of available supportive services after distress screening. However, identifying the reasons for accepting or refusing help is mandatory for implementing a screening policy. The present study explored the practical usefulness of and potential barriers to the application of distress management.

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Objective: The objectives of this study were to evaluate, in the Italian cultural context, breast cancer patients' main meaning themes related to the experience of the disease, on the one side, and to be part of an existentially oriented group intervention, on the other.

Method: A short reorientation-existential (RET) group intervention, structured by using some tools and background from cognitive analytic therapy (CAT) and based on the meaning-centered psychotherapy (MCP) existential framework, was delivered to 29 breast cancer patients. The sessions were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, with the narratives from reflective exercises (meaning of the journey cancer, meaning of the journey of intervention) uploaded to computer software NVivo 11.

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