Could the severity of symptoms of schizophrenia affect ability of self-appraisal of cognitive deficits in patients with schizophrenia? Lack of insight as a mediator between the two domains.

The relationship between subjective appraisal of cognitive deficits and symptom severity in schizophrenia is unclear. Insight reportedly affects both factors. Our aim is to further asses the relationship between subjective perception of cognitive deficits, symptom severity and lack of insight as a mediator variable. 109 subjects with schizophrenia were evaluated. Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) was modelled as independent variable, Subjective Scale to Investigate Cognition in Schizophrenia (SSTICS) as dependent and "Lack of Insight" (LoI) PANSS Item as mediator one. Mediation was assessed using bootstrap estimation approach. LoI acts as a suppressor variable (i.e., it enhances the relation between the independent and dependent variable) between Negative Symptoms and SSTICS, while showing a mediation effect between Depressive symptoms and SSTICS. LoI has a central role in mediating the relationship between negative and depressed symptoms on the one hand and self-appraisals of cognitive deficits (SACD) assessed with SSTICS on the other. Its suppressor role between negative symptoms and STICSS favour a direct effect of negative symptoms on SACD. On the other hand, its mediator role between depression and SSTICS is consistent with several reports of the 'insight paradox' of an enhanced severity of depression in patients with higher awareness of their disability.

[Effects on health of the L'Aquila (Central Italy) 2009 earthquake]. / Gli effetti sulla salute del sisma dell'Aquila del 2009.

BACKGROUND: an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude struck the town and province of L'Aquila on 6th April 2009. About 100,000 buildings were damaged, 1,600 people remained injured and 309 deceased; 66,000 people were left homeless by the disaster. The studies performed on the consequences of this seismic event have been numerous, more than those published on the occasion of similar events in Italy. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: an electronic bibliographic research was conducted through Embase, MedLine, Current Contents, Web of Science, PsycINFO during a reference period from April 2009 to August 2015. All articles fulfilling keywords criteria of «L'Aquila¼ and/or «earthquake¼ were eventually selected. A further search was conducted on Google and Google Scholar and authors were contacted if necessary to obtain article copies. Finally, 56 papers were identified and grouped in areas of interest: studies in general population, clinical studies on psychiatric sample, studies on medical conditions, studies on suicidal behaviours, and studies human and animal behaviours. RESULTS: Twenty-three studies were conducted on general populations, 9 of whom on adolescent samples. All studies were done in convenience samples. Thirteen clinical studies were conducted in psychiatric samples and 16 in medical or paraphysiological conditions. Three studies were conducted in suicidal ideations and behaviours. One article is about human and animal behaviours. These studies show that different population groups were characterized by specific kinds of response to the trauma with different possible interactions of risk and protective factors. CONCLUSIONS: from such observations it can be conceived that research on the evaluation and identification of the interventions have to change across years in order to meet the needs of the different subgroups of survivors.

Alterations of cerebral white matter structure in psychosis and their clinical correlations: a systematic review of Diffusion Tensor Imaging studies.

Schizophrenia is a common, severe and chronically disabling mental illness. Most of MRI studies in schizophrenia suggest the involvement of white matter (WM) pathology in multiple cerebral regions in the neurobiology of this condition. White matter fiber tracts connecting numerous cortical regions have been the focus of a number of studies using a magnetic resonance technique called "Diffusion Tensor Imaging" (DTI). A literature search of published DTI studies was conducted using the major database National Centre for Biotechnology information (NCBI) PubMed (MEDLINE). Our review covers 95 published papers. We summarise the main DTI findings involving the different brain regions in patients affected by or at high-risk for psychosis; we discuss clinical implications of these white matter disruptions and the limitations of current studies, listing the potential confounds and suggesting potential future research directions.