COVID-19 has challenged the health workforce worldwide. In this cross-sectional study with a retrospective assessment, we explored the impact of the pandemic on mental health and sleep among a sample of Italian nurses and medical doctors. A total of 287 healthcare workers (212 nurses and 75 physicians) completed a web survey on socio-demographic, psychological, and sleep-related aspects referring to the period before the pandemic and to the present period of February to June 2022. Comparisons between nurses and physicians revealed that the former had greater distress in response to the pandemic. Consistently, the multivariate analysis of covariance showed that even if both groups were negatively impacted by the pandemic, nurses presented a greater worsening over time regarding several psychological and sleep symptoms. Furthermore, we observed that working on the frontline represented an additional risk factor for nurses. In line with previous evidence, we also found that personal experiences with COVID-19 are significant predictors of the current health status. Our results underscore the urgent need for preventive programs among healthcare operators to increase their coping skills and prevent the long-term consequences of chronic stress, especially for high-risk professionals. Specific attention should also be devoted to programs to improve sleep quality and reduce sleep-related traumatic symptoms.

To reduce the spread of COVID-19, the Italian government imposed a rigid lockdown and, for a whole year, continued to declare stringent rules to curb the community spread. This study provides an overview of university students’ symptomatology and help-seeking behaviour before and during the pandemic. It aims to evaluate the impact of the different phases of the pandemic on students’ mental health. We collected data in four-time points between March 2019 and March 2021. A total of 454 students (F = 85; M = 15) were included in the study. Students answered a socio-demographic and a standardized questionnaire (i.e., SCL-90-R) to evaluate a broad range of symptomatology. The results suggest that students experienced moderate to severe levels of depressive, obsessive-compulsive and anxiety symptomatology. About 14% of the sample met the criteria for at least one mental health disorder, but most were not receiving mental health care. During the lockdown, compared with other phases, female students reported worse symptoms in the obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism dimensions. The increasing symptomatology disappeared after the lifting of the lockdown. The results showed no difference in the male groups. Preventive and support strategies should be improved in the university context.

The genetic polymorphisms involved in the physiopathology of binge eating disorder (BED) are currently unclear. This systematic review aims to highlight and summarize the research on polymorphisms that is conducted in the BED. We looked for observational studies where there was a genetic comparison between adults with BED, in some cases also with obesity or overweight, and healthy controls or obesity/overweight without BED. Our protocol was written using PRISMA. It is registered at PROSPERO (identification: CRD42020198645). To identify potentially relevant documents, the following bibliographic databases were searched without a time limit, but until September 2020: PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science. In total, 21 articles were included in the qualitative analysis of the systematic review, as they met the eligibility criteria. Within the selected studies, 41 polymorphisms of 17 genes were assessed. Overall, this systematic review provides a list of potentially useful genetic polymorphisms involved in BED: 5-HTTLPR (5-HTT), Taq1A (ANKK1/DRD2), A118G (OPRM1), C957T (DRD2), rs2283265 (DRD2), Val158Met (COMT), rs6198 (GR), Val103Ile (MC4R), Ile251Leu (MC4R), rs6265 (BNDF), and Leu72Met (GHRL). It is important to emphasize that Taq1A is the polymorphism that showed, in two different research groups, the most significant association with BED. The remaining polymorphisms need further evidence to be confirmed.

The aim of this study was to explore whether the attentional system, as far as an endogenous orienting is concerned, allocates resources along the sagittal plane and whether such a process is affected by, and is likely to be based on, different functional representations of 3D space in the brain. Several models make a main action-based distinction between representations of peripersonal space and of those extrapersonal space. Accordingly, if attention has to move from one representation to another, it should be possible to observe a decrease in performance during such a transition. To test this hypothesis three experiments were run in which participants performed a cued detection task. Cue stimuli were informative and were centrally located around the fixation point. Target stimuli were displayed at four different depth planes. In the first experiment, assuming that the border between the peripersonal space and the extrapersonal space was at 1 m from the observer, half the target stimuli were located in the peripersonal space and half in the extrapersonal space. The fixation point was located at 1 m from the observer. In the second experiment, the fixation point was moved at 2 m from the observer in order to rule out the possible effects of ocular motor programming. In the third experiment, in order to rule out effects related to the spatial layout of target stimuli (i.e., centre of mass effect) two target stimuli were located in the peripersonal space and six in the extrapersonal space. In all the experiments, besides a validity effect, we observed greater reaction times when attention shift was across spatial representations than when it was within the same representation. The implications for action-oriented models of attention are discussed.

Sociotropy (anaclitic) and autonomy (introjective) are conceptualised as two personality dimensions that confer vulnerability to depression. According to Blatt and Beck’s theories, sociotropic individuals exhibit distinctive patterns of symptoms such as prominent anxiety, depressed mood, helplessness, crying and somatic concerns, while self-critical ones seem to exhibit a pattern of symptoms including prominent guilt, hopelessness, feelings of failure and worthlessness and other cognitive symptoms.This systematic review was performed with the aim of investigating whether and to what extent psychological dimensions of anaclitic-sociotropic and introjective-autonomy are related to a specific core of depressive symptoms. The search was conducted in three databases (PubMed, PsycINFO and Scopus) and 27 articles were selected.Results showed a weak association between somatic symptoms and dependent personality traits, while the relationship between self-criticism and cognitive symptomatology was significantly higher. These findings are discussed in the context of future research, necessary to corroborate the existence of a form of depression characterised by somatic features usually ignored by diagnostic criteria, essential to direct psychological treatments to these depressive personality differences.