The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global pandemic spreading worldwide, and Italy represented the first European country involved. Healthcare workers (HCWs) facing COVID-19 pandemic represented an at-risk population for new psychosocial COVID-19 strain and consequent mental health symptoms. The aim of the present study was to identify the possible impact of working contextual and personal variables (age, gender, working position, years of experience, proximity to infected patients) on professional quality of life, represented by compassion satisfaction (CS), burnout, and secondary traumatization (ST), in HCWs facing COVID-19 emergency. Further, two multivariable linear regression analyses were fitted to explore the association of mental health selected outcomes, anxiety and depression, with some personal and working characteristics that are COVID-19-related. A sample of 265 HCWs of a major university hospital in central Italy was consecutively recruited at the outpatient service of the Occupational Health Department during the acute phase of COVID-19 pandemic. HCWs were assessed by Professional Quality of Life-5 (ProQOL-5), the Nine-Item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), and the Seven-Item Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7) to evaluate, respectively, CS, burnout, ST, and symptoms of depression and anxiety. Females showed higher ST than males, while frontline staff and healthcare assistants reported higher CS rather than second-line staff and physicians, respectively. Burnout and ST, besides some work or personal variables, were associated to depressive or anxiety scores. The COVID-19 pandemic represents a new working challenge for HCWs and intervention strategies to prevent burnout and ST to reduce the risk of adverse mental health outcomes are needed.

Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (Steinert’s disease or DM1), the most common form of autosomal dominant muscular dystrophy in adults, is a multisystem disorder, affecting skeletal muscle as well as eyes, heart, gastrointestinal tract, endocrine system, and central nervous system, finally responsible of increasing disabilities and secondary social consequences. To date, DM1-related brain involvement represents a challenging field of research. It is well known that DM1 patients frequently present neuropsychological disturbances and psychiatric comorbidities among which reduced awareness of disease burden and its progression, also defined as anosognosia, is common in clinical practice, this leading to secondary misattribution of symptoms, delay in timely diagnostic procedures and low compliance to treatment. Here we present an observational cross sectional study in which disease-related cognitive dysfunctions and quality of life were assessed by a protocol finally designed to estimate the prevalence of disease awareness in a sample of 65 adult-onset DM1 patients. Our analysis showed that in DM1 patients several cognitive functions, including executive and mnesic domains with visuo-spatial involvement, were affected. The assessment of anosognosia revealed that a high percentage (51.6 %) of DM1 subjects was disease unaware. The reduced illness awareness occurs across different physical and life domains, and it appears more prominent in Activities and Independence domains investigated by the Individualized Neuromuscular Quality Of Life (INQoL) questionnaire. Moreover, the unawareness resulted significantly related (at p <0.05 and p < 0.01) to the performance failure in cognitive tests, specifically in the domains of visuo-spatial memory, cognitive flexibility and conceptualization. The obtained data confirm, by a systematic analysis, what’s the common clinical perceiving of disease unawareness in Steinert’s disease, this related to the already known cognitive-behavioural impairment of frontal type in affected patients. We believe that a deep knowledge of this aspect will be useful for medical practice in the management of patients with DM1, also for guidance in occupational and social interventions, definition of outcome measures and in preparation of trial readiness.

(1) Background: Previous literature reported in both subjects with Borderline personality disorder (BPD) and Bipolar disorder (BD) higher levels of autistic traits, linked to a greater suicidality risk. The aim of this study was to evaluate and compare the presence of autistic traits in a sample of individuals with BD or BPD, with a specific focus on suicidality. (2) Methods: We recruited two clinical samples of subjects (BPD and BD) and a control group without a diagnosis according to DSM-5 (CTL). Subjects were assessed with the AdAS Spectrum, the RRS and, for evaluating suicidality, the MOODS-SR. (3) Results: The CTL group showed significantly lower scores of both BD and BPD on AdAS Spectrum, RRS, and suicidality scores. BPD subjects showed significantly lower scores than BD ones in most of AdAS Spectrum domain scores. Correlation and regression analyses highlighted specific patterns of association among AdAS Spectrum domains, RRS, and suicidality in each clinical group. (4) Conclusions: Both BPD and BD individuals show greater levels of autistic traits, which seem to be distributed in a continuum featuring the highest levels among BD subjects. In both disorders, higher autistic traits were linked to suicidal tendencies, although with different patterns of association between BD and BPD subjects.

Background: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and post-traumatic stress spectrum have been recently applied to understand the impact of life-threatening disease or injury in one’s child; nevertheless, scant data are available on a particular chronic illness such as epilepsy whose phenotypic expression is seizures, which are acute, sudden, and unpredictable manifestations. Subjects with bipolar disorders or with mood spectrum symptoms demonstrated to be more vulnerable to develop PTSD in the aftermath of a trauma. Objectives: The main aim of this study was to evaluate post-traumatic symptoms among 134 parents of children with a diagnosis of epilepsy, followed at the outpatient neurologic unit of Department of Pediatrics in Santa Chiara Hospital in Pisa, as well as gender differences. The second aim of this study was to estimate the impact of lifetime mood spectrum on post-traumatic stress symptoms in the same study sample after fulfillment of the Trauma and Loss Spectrum-Self Report (TALS-SR) and the Mood Spectrum-Self Report (MOODS-SR) lifetime version. Results: Results showed 10.4% and 37.3% of PTSD full and partial, respectively. Demographic characteristics and clinical features of the study sample did not show any impact on stress symptomatology. Mothers presented higher rates at all Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-5 PTSD symptoms’ clusters except avoidance. Nevertheless, noteworthy correlations between post-traumatic symptomatology and mood spectrum symptoms detected with the self-report tools, emerged only in the subgroup of the fathers. Conclusion: These findings corroborate the need to provide assistance to caregivers of pediatric patients and confirm the hypothesis that lifetime mood spectrum may have an impact on reaction to traumas.