The network structure of psychopathological and resilient responses to the pandemic: A multicountry general population study of depression and anxiety.

Commonly identified patterns of psychological distress in response to adverse events are characterized by resilience (i.e., little to no distress), delayed (i.e., distress that increases over time), recovery (i.e., distress followed by a gradual decrease over time), and sustained (i.e., distress remaining stable over time). This study aimed to examine these response patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Anxiety and depressive symptom data collected across four European countries over the first year of the pandemic were analyzed (N = 3,594). Participants were first categorized into groups based on the four described patterns. Network connectivity and symptom clustering were then estimated for each group and compared. Two thirds (63.6%) of the sample displayed a resilience pattern. The sustained distress network (16.3%) showed higher connectivity than the recovery network (10.0%) group, p = .031; however, the resilient network showed higher connectivity than the delayed network (10.1%) group, p = .016. Regarding symptom clustering, more clusters emerged in the recovery network (i.e., three) than the sustained network (i.e., two). These results replicate findings that resilience was the most common mental health pattern over the first pandemic year. Moreover, they suggest that high network connectivity may be indicative of a stable mental health response over time, whereas fewer clusters may be indicative of a sustained distress pattern. Although exploratory, the network perspective provides a useful tool for examining the complexity of psychological responses to adverse events and, if replicated, could be useful in identifying indicators of protection against or vulnerability to future psychological distress.

The mediating role of scientifical-medical satisfaction between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and vaccine confidence: a two-waves structural equation model.

Vaccine confidence has emerged as one of the most relevant psychological factors implied in the worldwide affecting the fight against COVID-19-as well as public trust in doctors, medicine, and science. Indeed, the vaccine confidence is crucial to maximize the trust in vaccines and their use for prevention, with several implications for public health. This study aimed to analyse the relationships among between vaccine confidence, conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19, and satisfaction with science and medicine in handling the COVID-19 pandemic. A longitudinal observational survey was administered to a convenience sample (n = 544; mean age 52.76 y.o., SD = 15.11; females 46.69%) from the Italian general population. A two-waves mediation model-a structural equation model technique-was used. The survey was part of a larger international project ( https://osf.io/qy65b/ ). The model highlighted that the conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19 had a negative effect on the satisfaction with medicine and science (ß = - 0.13, se = 0.03, p < .001). The latter, in turn, had a positive effect on vaccine confidence (ß = 0.10, se = .05, p < .001). Interestingly, the effect of conspiracy beliefs on vaccine confidence was completely mediated by the scientifical-medical satisfaction (ß = - 0.02, se = 0.01, p < .05). These results highlight how the scientifical-medical satisfaction can fully mediate the relationship between conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19 and vaccine confidence. These findings about vaccine hesitancy and confidence and disclose have implications for psychological and social interventions that could promote vaccine confidence by targeting the satisfaction with science and medicine.

The role of the COVID-19 impersonal threat strengthening the associations of right-wing attitudes, nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiments.

Literature showed that the link between right-wing attitudes and ethnocentric attitudes gets stronger under existential threats, but the role exerted by an impersonal threat - as COVID-19 - on right-wing attitudes is still unclear. This study aimed to highlight the role of anxiety exerted by the impersonal COVID-19 threat on the relationship between right-wing attitudes and ethnocentric attitudes, as nationalism and anti-immigrants' sentiments. As part of an international project to evaluate the impact of COVID-19, this study administered an online survey to a representative sample (n 1038). The anxiety generated by an impersonal threat as COVID-19 - thus not exerted by any outgroup - can moderate the relationship among personal Right-Wing Authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and ethnocentric attitudes. This is the first study demonstrating that existential threat is effective also when exerted by an impersonal agent (as COVID-19) rather than by an outgroup. Second, these findings disclose useful implications for preventive psychological interventions and for social policy makers. Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-023-04305-w.

Measurement invariance of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7) across four European countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7) are self-report measures of major depressive disorder and generalised anxiety disorder. The primary aim of this study was to test for differential item functioning (DIF) on the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 items based on age, sex (males and females), and country. METHOD: Data from nationally representative surveys in UK, Ireland, Spain, and Italy (combined N = 6,054) were used to fit confirmatory factor analytic and multiple-indictor multiple-causes models. RESULTS: Spain and Italy had higher latent variable means than the UK and Ireland for both anxiety and depression, but there was no evidence for differential items functioning. CONCLUSIONS: The PHQ-9 and GAD-7 scores were found to be unidimensional, reliable, and largely free of DIF in data from four large nationally representative samples of the general population in the UK, Ireland, Italy and Spain.

Assessment of perceived support in the context of emergency: Development and validation of the psycho-social support scale.

In research and clinical contexts, it is important to briefly evaluate perceived Psychological and Social Support (PSS) to plan psychological interventions and allocate efforts and resources. However, an appropriate brief assessment tool for PSS was lacking. This study aimed at developing a brief and accurate scale to specifically measure PSS in clinical and emergency contexts, with specific, relevant, targeted, and irredundant items. Experienced clinicians developed the perceived Psycho-Social Support Scale (PSSS) and administered it to a clinical sample (N = 112) seeking psychological help during the COVID-19 emergency. A Confirmatory Factor Analysis examined the PSSS internal structure, and a Multiple Indicator and Multiple Causes model investigated its association with the number of sessions and emotional symptoms. The PSSS showed good psychometric properties and the Confirmatory Factor Analysis provided acceptable fit indexes for a unidimensional structure. The Multiple Indicators and Multiple Causes revealed that more sessions and emotional symptoms were associated with lower PSSS scores. The PSSS is a reliable brief tool to measure PS and could be useful to individualize treatments (i.e., number of sessions) to efficiently allocate efforts and resources in clinical contexts and emergencies (e.g., earthquake, COVID-19 pandemic). Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-03344-z.

The Psychosocial Assessment of Transplant Candidates: Inter-Rater Reliability and Predictive Value of the Italian Stanford Integrated Psychosocial Assessment for Transplantation (SIPAT).

BACKGROUND: The Stanford Integrated Psychosocial Assessment for Transplantation (SIPAT) is a comprehensive instrument developed to accurately assess the main pretransplant psychosocial risk factors that may impact transplant outcomes. OBJECTIVE: As neither established assessment procedures nor standardized tools designed to perform pretransplant psychosocial evaluation are currently available in Italy, the present study was designed to develop and preliminarily validate the Italian version of the SIPAT. METHODS: First, our team developed the Italian version of the SIPAT, following standard forward-back translation procedures. Then, the Italian version of the SIPAT was retrospectively and blindly applied to 118 randomly selected transplant cases (40 heart, 40 lung, and 38 liver) by 2 independent examiners. Information about the patients' final transplant listing recommendation (i.e., listing vs. deferral) was independently collected from the respective transplant teams. RESULTS: The inter-rater reliability of the Italian version of the SIPAT scores was substantial (Cohen's kappa = 0.77; P < 0.001). Moreover, the predictive value of the SIPAT ratings on the final transplant listing recommendation (i.e., listing vs. deferral) for each examiner was significant (both P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Current findings suggest that SIPAT is a promising and reliable instrument in its Italian version. Given these excellent psychometric characteristics, the use of the SIPAT as part of the pretransplant psychosocial evaluation in Italian medical settings is highly encouraged.

An iterative procedure for extracting skill maps from data.

The methodologies for the construction of a knowledge structure mainly refer to the query to experts, the skill maps, and the data-driven approaches. This last method is of growing interest in recent literature. In this paper, an iterative procedure for building a skill map from a set of data is introduced. This procedure is based on the minimization of the distance between the knowledge structure delineated by a given skill map and the data. The accuracy of the proposed method is tested through a number of simulation studies where the amount of noise in the data is manipulated as well as the kind of structure to be reconstructed. Results show that the procedure is accurate and that its performance tends to be sufficiently stable even with high error rates. The procedure is compared to two already-existing methodologies to derive knowledge structures from a set of data. The use of the corrected Akaike Information Criterion (AICc) as a stopping criterion of the iterative reconstruction procedure is tested against the app criterion introduced by Schrepp. Moreover, two empirical applications on clinical data are reported, and their results show the applicability of the procedure.

Measurement of change in health status with Rasch models.

BACKGROUND: The traditional approach to the measurement of change presents important drawbacks (no information at individual level, ordinal scores, variance of the measurement instrument across time points), which Rasch models overcome. The article aims to illustrate the features of the measurement of change with Rasch models. METHODS: To illustrate the measurement of change using Rasch models, the quantitative data of a longitudinal study of heart-surgery patients (N = 98) were used. The scale "Perception of Positive Change" was used as an example of measurement instrument. All patients underwent cardiac rehabilitation, individual psychological intervention, and educational intervention. Nineteen patients also attended progressive muscle relaxation group trainings. The scale was administered before and after the interventions. Three Rasch approaches were used. Two separate analyses were run on the data from the two time points to test the invariance of the instrument. An analysis was run on the stacked data from both time points to measure change in a common frame of reference. Results of the latter analysis were compared with those of an analysis that removed the influence of local dependency on patient measures. Statistics t, χ(2) and F were used for comparing the patient and item measures estimated in the Rasch analyses (a-priori α = .05). Infit, Outfit, R and item Strata were used for investigating Rasch model fit, reliability, and validity of the instrument. RESULTS: Data of all 98 patients were included in the analyses. The instrument was reliable, valid, and substantively unidimensional (Infit, Outfit < 2 for all items, R = .84, item Strata range = 3.93-6.07). Changes in the functioning of the instrument occurred across the two time, which prevented the use of the two separate analyses to unambiguously measure change. Local dependency had a negligible effect on patient measures (p ≥ .8674). Thirteen patients improved, whereas 3 worsened. The patients who attended the relaxation group trainings did not report greater improvement than those who did not (p = .1007). CONCLUSIONS: Rasch models represent a valid framework for the measurement of change and a useful complement to traditional approaches.

Beyond the score: clinical evaluation through formal psychological assessment.

Questionnaires generate numerical scores, but endorsing different sets of items could produce the same score despite reflecting qualitatively different configurations of clinical features. Formal psychological assessment (FPA) attempts to overcome this by identifying the clinical features entailed by observed response patterns. This study illustrates an application of FPA to the cleaning subscale of a questionnaire assessing obsessive-compulsive symptoms and DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria for obsessive-compulsive disorder. A deterministic model of the items-criteria relationships was constructed by mapping each item to each diagnostic criterion. The resulting model was tested on a large community sample (N = 4,412). Results indicate that the theoretical model has adequate fit; item error rates and probabilities for each of the criteria are examined. Clinically relevant examples of the items-criteria relationships are discussed. Possible applications of FPA to personality assessment are also discussed, including long multidimensional questionnaires and questionnaires that use subtle item content.

Neurocognitive deficit and quality of life after mitral valve repair.

BACKGROUND AND AIM OF THE STUDY: Postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) is a relevant complication after cardiac surgery that affects patient outcome. The study aims was to prospectively evaluate neurocognitive functions, quality of life (QoL) and psychological distress following minimally invasive mitral valve (MV) repair. METHODS: A total of 98 consecutive patients (64 males, 34 females; mean age 53.7 +/- 10.3 years; mean logistic EuroSCORE 3.23 +/- 2.90) who underwent MV repair through a Hearthport Port-Access system was enrolled in the study. Neurocognitive evaluations were performed using the Mini-Mental State Examination, Trail-Making Test (TMT-A and -B) and digit span shortly before surgery, at hospital discharge, and at three months postoperatively. Measures of QoL (Medical Outcomes, Study Short Form, SF-36) and psychological distress (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, HADS) were also undertaken. RESULTS: The large degree of POCD referred to in other studies was not observed; rather, a clear sign of improvement was observed when considering TMT-B (p <0.001) and digit span forward (p < 0.05) tests at the three-month follow up. These results also agreed with the QoL and mood state indices, which showed improvements (p < 0.05) in all SF-36 and HADS scores. No significant relationship was found between neurocognitive impairment and the cross-clamp and cardiopulmonary bypass times. CONCLUSION: The study results highlighted the low risk of neurocognitive deficits after MV repair. A substantial improvement in the patients' neurocognitive assessment and QoL, from the preoperative condition to the three-month follow up after surgery, was observed. However, the small number of patients demonstrating a clear cognitive decline made it difficult to identify causative factors for POCD.

Cognitive and emotional factors affecting avoidable decision-making delay in acute myocardial infarction male adults.

BACKGROUND: To study the potentially avoidable decision-making delay in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) adults male with different psychological characteristics a nationwide multicentre study was conducted in Italy by the 118 Coronary Care Units (CCUs). METHOD: 929 AMI patients consecutively presented to the CCU in a conscious condition less than two hours, 2-6 hours, 6-12 hours, and more than 12 hours after symptom onset and completing the Disease Distress Questionnaire (DDQ) were enrolled in a multicentre case-control study. The DDQ collects information regarding the decision time to seek help, and includes a set of items assessing psychological factors and pain-related symptoms. The relationship between the perceived threat and the delay due to decision-making was evaluated by means of a multivariate model using LISREL 8 structural equation modelling. RESULTS: The delay significantly correlated with perceived threat, which was mainly related to somatic awareness. It was only slightly related to pain and was not associated with any of the other variables. Perceived threat was also related to psychological upset, fear and health worries, the first of which was considerably influenced by emotional instability. CONCLUSION: Somatic awareness is the main dimension affecting perceived threat, but subjective pain intensity affects the delay both directly and indirectly. The core of the model is the relationship between perceived threat and the delay due to decision-making. The importance of subjective pain intensity is well documented, but it is still not clear how subjective and objective pain interact.

The Effect of Partial Sleep Deprivation and Time-on-Task on Young Drivers' Subjective and Objective Sleepiness.

Despite sleepiness being considered one of the main factors contributing to road crashes, and even though extensive efforts have been made in the identification of techniques able to detect it, the assessment of fitness-to-drive regarding driving fatigue and sleepiness is still an open issue. In the literature on driver sleepiness, both vehicle-based measures and behavioral measures are used. Concerning the former, the one considered more reliable is the Standard Deviation of Lateral Position (SDLP) while the PERcent of eye CLOSure over a defined period of time (PERCLOS) seems to be the most informative behavioral measure. In the present study, using a within-subject design, we assessed the effect of a single night of partial sleep deprivation (PSD, less than 5 h sleeping time) compared to a control condition (full night of sleep, 8 h sleeping time) on SDLP and PERCLOS, in young adults driving in a dynamic car simulator. Results show that time-on-task and PSD affect both subjective and objective sleepiness measures. Moreover, our data confirm that both objective and subjective sleepiness increase through a monotonous driving scenario. Considering that SDLP and PERCLOS were often used separately in studies on driver sleepiness and fatigue detection, the present results have potential implications for fitness-to-drive assessment in that they provide useful information allowing to combine the advantages of the two measures for drowsiness detection while driving.

A variational approach to behavioral and neuroelectrical laws.

Variational methods play a fundamental and unifying role in several fields of physics, chemistry, engineering, economics, and biology, as they allow one to derive the behavior of a system as a consequence of an optimality principle. A possible application of these methods to a model of perception is given by considering a psychophysical law as the solution of an Euler-Lagrange equation. A general class of Lagrangians is identified by requiring the measurability of prothetic continua on interval scales. The associated Hamiltonian (the energy of the process) is tentatively connected with neurophysiological aspects. As an example of the suggested approach a particular choice of the Lagrangian, that is a sufficient condition to obtain classical psychophysical laws, while accounting for psychophysical adaptation and the stationarity of neuronal activity, is used to explore a possible relation between a behavioral law and a neuroelectrical ,response based on the Naka-Rushton model.

[Measuring change in rehabilitative cardiology: reliability of a short questionnaire to assess an outcome]. / Valutazione psicologica del cambiamento in cardiologia riabilitativa: validazione di un questionario a forma breve per la valutazione di esito.

UNLABELLED: The present Italian health planning demands the use of tools, care and treatments useful for the National Health Service, but with empirical effectiveness scientifically sustained. Aim of the present paper is to verify the validity, the reliability and the responsiveness of the factor "Perception of positive change" (named Schedule C) in cardiovascular rehabilitation. METHOD: The reliability of the Schedule C of the CBA VE has been examined comparing the mean scores obtained from each item at the entry and just before the discharge through the t-Student for paired sample. To assess the concurrent validity we used the AD Short Scale to measure anxiety and depression. 100 patients who underwent cardiac surgery were enrolled during hospitalization for a Cardiac Rehabilitation Programme. Cronbach's alpha was used to assess internal consistency of each item. RESULTS: Each item of the Schedule C demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach Alpha > .88) and elevated correlations item-total for each item. The strong correlation of anxiety and depression scores with the Schedule C points out appropriate concurrent validation. CONCLUSIONS: We believe that the Schedule C of the CBA VE is endowed with suitable metric validity and then useful as outcome evaluation in cardiovascular rehabilitation settings.

[Job satisfaction, volition and reasons for choice of temporary work]. / Soddisfazione lavorativa, volizione e ragioni di scelta del lavoro temporaneo.

In this paper, we reviewed the literature on volition and the principal studies on the reasons for choosing temporary work, which explain in more details how voluntary/involuntary status is interpreted. The description of a research, based on a sample of 1979 workers, is presented with two aims: 1. confirm a structural model that examines the effects on satisfaction of some variables, such as motivation and trust; 2. evaluate the influence of volition and reasons for choosing a temporary employment on job satisfaction. The results confirm the plausibility of the proposed structural model and show interesting results regarding the reasons for choosing temporary work.

Affective Risk Associated With Menstrual Cycle Symptom Change.

In the present study we test whether cyclical changes in affective symptoms of the menstrual cycle are associated with higher mean levels of those same symptoms. Using prospective daily reports across two full menstrual cycles, from two samples of female University students (n = 213; n = 163), we applied both quartic polynomial regressions and cosine regressions to model cyclical change in symptoms, and to test for mean-level differences in symptoms across the resulting trajectory patterns. Counter to prior findings, but consistent with theoretical expectations, these results show that females who experience menstrual cycle-related changes in affect (whether a perimenstrual or mid-cycle increase) are at risk for higher average levels of affective symptoms. These results suggest that the mid-cycle group should be recognized as a target for future research that is associated with increased risk for chronic negative affective symptoms.

On the Implementation of Computerized Adaptive Observations for Psychological Assessment.

The use of observational tools in psychological assessment has decreased in recent years, mainly due to its personnel and time costs, and researchers have not explored methodological innovations like adaptive algorithms in observational assessment. In the present study, we introduce the behavior-driven observation procedure to develop, test, and implement observational adaptive instruments. In Study 1, we use a preexisting observational checklist to evaluate nonverbal behaviors related to psychotic symptoms and to specify the adaptive algorithm's model. We fit the model to observational data collected from 114 participants. The results support the model's goodness of fit. In Study 2, we use the estimated model parameters to calibrate the adaptive procedure and test the algorithm for accuracy and efficiency in adaptively reconstructing 58 nonadaptively collected response patterns. The results show the algorithm's good accuracy and efficiency, with a 40% average reduction in the number of administered items. In Study 3, we used real raters to test the adaptive checklist built with behavior-driven observation. The results indicate adequate intrarater agreement and good consistency of the observed response patterns. In conclusion, the results support the possibility of using behavior-driven observation to create accurate and affordable (in terms of resources) observational assessment tools.

[Social network analysis and eating disorders: a study concerning blogs]. / Social network analysis e disturbi del comportamento alimentare: una ricerca condotta sui blog.

This study is aimed at analyzing the structure of relations among blogs referring to Eating Disorders (ED). Through the use Of Social Network Analysis (SNA) we investigated both the groups and their structure in order to study the social processes within the network. A formal analysis of the ED blogs' characteristics has been carried out. This analysis provided us with information about network Centrality and Cohesion parameters. Results allow us to highlight the most relevant blogs in the network. Even if the extremely variable nature of the blogs does not allow to have a precise picture of the blogosphere referring to ED, this first attempt to apply SNA in this field allowed us to suggest interesting remarks about EBD both from the research and from the social perspective.

[A comparison of three health-related quality of life measures in COPD patients]. / Una comparazione di tre misure di qualità di vita legate allo stato di salute in pazienti BPCO.

INTRODUCTION: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is one of the most disabling diseases today, and a good assessment of Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) allows the clinicians to identify the critical areas where is possible to cure in order to improve the well-being of the patient. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to compare different questionnaires used for the evaluation of HRQoL, in order to assess their psychometric properties and their abilities to discriminate the different severity levels of COPD. METHODS: This research was conducted using the Medical Research Council (MRC) dyspnoea scale for grading the degree of a patient's breathlessness, St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ), Italian Health Status Questionnaire (IHSQ) and Maugeri Respiratory Failure-26 (MRF-26) were filled by 102 patients affected by COPD. RESULTS: We observed high internal and external correlations between the instruments, showing a good level of internal consistency. Results did not show any correlations between medical and psychological evaluation, in particular a lack of correlation (r = 0.321) between GOLD categorization and the evaluation of dyspnoea made by patients (MRC scale). Even the correlations between GOLD categorization, SGRQ (r = 0.226), MRF-26 (r = 0.237) and IHSQ (r = 0.239) did not show any correlations. The evaluation of discriminating properties of questionnaires had shown, for all the instruments, a good discrimination between higher levels, but more difficulties in the discrimination of lower levels (not only in MRC scale, but even in GOLD classification). CONCLUSIONS: The study confirms the high psychometric properties of the psychological instruments used in Italy to examine Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) indexes. It is observed that there isn't a direct correlation between severity of illness and self-perceived quality of life, so we can conclude that the construct of "quality of life" is more connected with self-perceived disability (dyspnoea and obstruct activities), than with the medical parameters. We can consider worthy of a psychological and clinical close examination the patients that are included in the first two GOLD categories, in case that they report scores connected with a high sense of limitation of Quality of Life. In short, clinicians have to distinguish and consider the concepts of physical health and HRQoL, composed by the multiple psychological factors that influenced the self-perceived well-being.

Exploring Diener's Multidimensional Conceptualization of Well-Being Through Network Psychometrics.

Previous research has addressed the study of the well-being structure focusing on the separability among hedonic and eudaimonic dimensions by means of latent variable approaches. Diener's tripartite model of Subjective Well-Being has often been identified with hedonic well-being, while flourishing (i.e., positive functioning) has been classified as a proxy for eudaimonic well-being. Instead of pursuing a theory-driven approach, the structure of well-being dimensions can be retrieved by means of network psychometrics that is a highly informative, data-driven approach that allows the model structure to spontaneously emerge from the relationships among indicators. Furthermore, we propose a strength centrality decomposition that is able to summarize the influence of a specific indicator within its dimension and between the other dimensions. Contrary to the theoretical conjecture that the separability among well-being dimensions can be grounded on a hedonic and eudaimonic distinction, our results point to a categorization of the Diener's well-being indicators based on the type of information they convey, that is global evaluation of life satisfaction, positive and negative affective experiences, and perceived positive functioning in life.