Mental Health Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic Long-Term Exposure in Italian Dermatologists.

The present study aimed at assessing the consequences of prolonged exposure to COVID-19 distress on mental health in non-frontline health care workers. For this purpose, we have conducted a survey on 425 Italian dermatologists, in the period February-March 2021. The psychopathological symptoms, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSD), as well as resilience, have been evaluated. The main factors that influence the physician's psychological health have been also investigated. Our study showed that the physicians older than 40 years, as well as those who lived this period in company, reported more personal resources, better managing the distress. Resilience, COVID-19 beliefs, COVID-19 working difficulties, and age were the common predictors of the severe psychopathological symptoms. An interesting result is that the lower level of resilience was the most powerful predictor of a more severe depression, as well as of a higher severity of generalized anxiety disorder, but not of COVID-19 PTSD. The fear of COVID-19 was the most powerful predictor of COVID-19 PTSD. Home conditions and previous SARS-CoV2 infection constituted significant predictors of severe depressive symptoms, but not of anxiety and COVID-19 PTSD. These results are useful in a better understanding of protective and risk factors involved in COVID-19 long-term distress exposure.

Emotional Dysregulation Mechanisms in Psychosomatic Chronic Diseases Revealed by the Instability Coefficient.

In the present work, we analyzed some emotional mechanisms (emotion dysregulation-ED, negative affect-NA, and emotional vulnerability) involved in chronic diseases by means of an interdisciplinary approach. We started from the conceptualization of emotions as a complex dynamic system that can be investigated and understood within a framework inspired by Chaos Theory. An "instability coefficient" Δ was computed to analyze ED mechanisms, NA, and emotional vulnerability in different disease groups (blood cancer, breast cancer, hypertension) as well as in healthy persons. This coefficient, recently defined by our group, computes the Euclidian distance between the pairs of vectors whose components are similar or reverted items of a test measuring ED. The emotional and somatic systems were considered as two complex dynamical systems in interaction. Due to this interaction, and as a result of the laws of complexity, a small perturbation in an inner state of the emotional system could generate an important reaction in the somatic system in time. The emotional vulnerability reflected by high values of Δ was associated with the chronic disease condition. The differences between illness groups and healthy persons, as well as between the three disease groups in Δ values, were analyzed. The results showed that there were significant differences between the chronic disease groups in Δ values. The most highly significant differences in Δ values were reported between the breast cancer group and the healthy group on one hand and between the breast cancer group and the blood cancer group on the other hand. The less significant differences in Δ values were noticed between the hypertension group and the control group. Δ was significant in predicting ED and NA. Compared to the classical approaches, the original contribution of our research is that these results encourage us to propose this interdisciplinary method of assessment as a challenging, valid tool of investigation and understanding of complex phenomena that occur in the emotional and somatic system.

Application of Chaos Theory in the Assessment of Emotional Vulnerability and Emotion Dysregulation in Adults.

In this work, we propose an interdisciplinary chaos analysis of emotion dysregulation (ED) and emotional vulnerability in adults. One of the main goals was the assessment of incongruences that occur in the evaluation of one's own emotional dysregulation mechanisms in the presence of an extremely weak stimulus (Butterfly Effect). Thus, we considered a "flavor" of the Lyapunov Function method based on the assumption that the effort of answering to the test is itself a small perturbation. In this context, we calculated the "instability coefficient" Δ defined as the Euclidean distance between the pairs of vectors that include similar and reverted items of a test. The relationship between Δ, ED, and emotional characteristics as quality (positive/negative) and type (trait/state) was highlighted. We hypothesized that a higher level of Δ should be significantly related with a higher ED and with the type and the quality of emotions. The results suggest that Δ is significantly correlated with trait emotions (positively with negative emotions, and negatively with positive ones) and with ED. Moreover, Δ significantly predicts ED in adults. Thus, we consider that this approach is promising with respect to the evolution of emotional mechanisms across time. The presence of an initial instability to a weak perturbation might predict future abnormal emotional functioning, which could put at risk the mental or psychosomatic systems.