Recent studies have documented the high prevalence of burnout among medicine and dentistry students, with potentially catastrophic consequences for both students and patients. Both environmental and personality factors play a part in burnout; perfectionism, a common trait in medicine students’ personalities, has been linked to psychological distress and increasing students’ vulnerability to burnout. Self-compassion, i.e., treating oneself kindly through hardship, has recently emerged as a buffer between perfectionism and psychological distress. While using a novel three-factor conceptualization of perfectionism (BIG3), this study aims to analyze if self-compassion has a protective role in the relationship between perfectionism and burnout, in a sample of medicine and dentistry students, through mediation analysis. We found that self-compassion significantly mediated the relationship between all three forms of perfectionism and burnout: as a partial mediator in self-critical and rigid perfectionism, as well as a full mediator in narcissistic perfectionism. Our findings underline self-compassion’s relevance in burnout prevention and management, supporting its use as an intervention target in burnout reduction programs and strategies.

Psychological reactions to the climate change (CC) crisis, encompassing worry, distress, and impairment, are influenced by personality. Also, these psychological reactions to CC and future anxiety can impact an individual’s overall psychological distress. The role of perfectionism in psychological distress through CC reactions and future anxiety (FA) has not yet been explored. Our aim was to explore the mediator roles of CC worry, CC distress, CC impairment, and FA in the link between perfectionism and general psychological distress while controlling for the effect of gender. A path analysis was conducted on a sample of 577 adults (mean age = 32.62 ± 14.71) from the general population (64.5% women). The final model with all statistically significant path coefficients (p ≤ 0.01) presented an excellent model fit: χ²(6) = 1.56, p = 0.152; CFI = 0.995; GFI = 0.995; TLI = 0.986; RMSEA = 0.031, CI = 0.000–0.068, p = 0.764. Perfectionism was associated with general PD through several indirect pathways, including CC worry, CC distress, CC impairment, and FA, while controlling for the effect of gender. The model explained 3.89% of CC worry, 39.70% of CC distress, 20.64% of CC impairment, 23.73% of FA, and 20.20% of general PD. These findings suggest that cognitive and emotional responses to CC and future anxiety are exacerbated with higher perfectionism levels, which leads to higher overall psychological distress. These data underscore that individuals with high levels of perfectionism may require help to psychologically adapt to CC. Interventions aimed at lowering the maladaptive cognitive and emotional responses to climate threats should be implemented.

Background: Although obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms are common in the perinatal period, measures to comprehensively assess their presence, frequency, interference and severity are lacking. The Perinatal Obsessive–Compulsive Scale (POCS) is the only self-report questionnaire with context-specific items. It includes items to assess perinatal-specific obsessions and compulsions, a severity scale and an interference scale. Objectives: (1) to analyze the validity and reliability of the Portuguese version of the POCS; (2) to find Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder (OCD) prevalence in postpartum and determine the POCS cut-off scores and its accuracy (sensitivity, specificity and predictive values) in screening for OCD according to DSM-5 criteria; (3) to describe the prevalence, content, severity, interference and onset of OC symptoms in the postpartum. Methods: 212 women in postpartum filled in a booklet, including the POCS Portuguese preliminary version, the Perinatal Anxiety Screening Scale and the Postpartum Depression Screening Scale; they were interviewed with the Diagnostic Interview for Psychological Distress—Postpartum. Results: Confirmatory Factor Analysis revealed that POCS presented acceptable fit indexes (χ²/df = 2.2971; CFI= 0.9319; GFI = 0.8574; TLI = 0.9127; RMSEA = 0.860, p < 0.001). The Cronbach’s alphas were all > 0.800. The POCS cut-off point that maximized the Youden Index (J = 0.86, 95% CI [0.94–0.99]) was 20, corresponding to an Area Under the Curve of 0.970 (p < 0.001; Standard Error = 0.031; 95% CI: 0.937 to 0.988). The prevalence of postpartum OCD was 3.30%. The severity of thoughts and behaviors was moderate to severe for approximately 15% of women. For thirty-five percent of women, the onset of symptoms was in the first three months postpartum. Conclusions: The Portuguese version of POCS has good validity, reliability and accuracy and may be considered ready for use in both clinic and research fields. POCS provides specific information regarding symptoms and individual patterns experienced by each woman, which allows normalization, destigmatization and personalized intervention.

Background: The increasingly fast development of mobile health technologies holds significant value for individuals dealing with mental health conditions. However, inadequate consideration of patients' preferences and expectations undermines real-world outcomes, including sustained adherence. Driven by the belief that specific characteristics, such as youth and higher education, of individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder make them suitable for digital adoption, we investigated mHealth-related desirability factors within this patient group. Methods: Fifty-one conveniently selected adults with obsessive-compulsive disorder filled in a self-report questionnaire about symptom self-management preferences, with an emphasis on assessing mobile health options and perceptions of patient-centeredness. Results: The smartphone phone app emerged as the top choice of most of the sample for receiving information about symptom status (82.4%), obtaining general information about obsessive-compulsive disorder (74.5%), and symptom self-registration (66.7%), with no significant effect of sex or living location. Although only 23.5% of participants were using a health-related app, most expressed interest in using it for receiving symptom management tips (98.1%), medical advice (94.2%), symptom evolution updates (90.2%), lifestyle information (92.2%), medication tracking (88.2%) and short symptom self-reports (90.2%). Median expectations regarding mobile health's impact on patient-centeredness, satisfaction, and adherence were positive or very positive. Conclusions: Our data confirm that individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder exhibit strong inclinations and optimistic expectations toward technology-based solutions. We highlight some of the preferences within this patient group, which can inform the design of practical, real-world applications.

Impact of ADHD and OCD in Portuguese and Brazilian Patients with Tourette Syndrome During the COVID-19 Pandemic