ABSTRACT
Introduction: Guilt, shame, and embarrassment represent affective experiences with social implications and diverse self-relevant negative affect. While the distinction between these emotion terms has been extensively investigated, little is known about how they diverge and are related to each other and their crosscultural differences. Methods: Here, we used a community sample (N = 163) comprised of Americans and Italians and a scenario-based measure in which we asked participants to report the intensity of emotions that the story's main character would feel. The elements used to build the scenarios were based on a recent theoretical approach that proposes distinguishing cognitive, somatic, interoceptive, and behavioral ingredients to differentiate between these emotions. We hypothesized that these ingredients might effectively elicit the target emotions and that the main differences across these cultures would be associated with the emotion terms of shame/vergogna. Results: Our findings suggest that these defining elements are effective in evoking experiences of guilt, shame, and embarrassment. Moreover, we found that shame was equally elicited by the Shame and Guilt Scenarios only in the American sample, thus suggesting a proximity between shame and guilt in the American sample compared to the Italian's terms of vergogna and colpa. Discussion: These results suggest important implications for the psychology of moral emotions and highlight the importance of taking into account some cognitive factors, such as the quality of self-evaluation, the discrepancy between the actual self and the ideal self vs. the sense of perceived responsibility, and the different domains related to self-esteem.
ABSTRACT
Background and Objectives: While the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for general mental health and the increase in anxiety and depression are clear, less is known about the potential effect of the pandemic on OCD. The purpose of this study is to collect new data to monitor the symptomatic status of patients with OCD during the period of emergency due to COVID-19 and to make a comparison between two psychodiagnostic evaluations. Methods: Eleven OCD patients and their psychotherapists were recruited. All patients had a specific psychodiagnostic assessment for OCD (SCL-90; OCI-R; Y-BOCS self-report) performed between December 2019 and January 2020 (t0), and undertook cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure and prevention of response protocol (ERP) before the lockdown. The psychodiagnostic assessment carried out at t0 was re-administered (t1) to all patients, together with a set of qualitative questions collected through an online survey. The respective therapists were asked to document the status of the therapy and the monitoring of symptoms through use of a semi-structured interview (Y-BOCS) and a qualitative interview. Non-parametric analyses were conducted. Results: Patients reported a significant decrease in OCD symptoms. Data analysis showed a decrease in the scores across t0 and at t1 on the Y-BOCS (SR) total self-report, and on OCD symptoms' severity assessed by means of the OCI-r and SCL-90 r OC subscale, for 11 participants. Relating to the measures detected by psychotherapists, marginally significant improvements and lower scores were found in the Y-BOCS (I). An improvement in symptoms was noticed by 90.9% of the clinical sample; this was confirmed by 45.4% of the therapists, who claimed moderate progress in their patients. Conclusions: The data collected through standardized measurements at two different times, albeit relative to a small sample, assume relevance from a clinical point of view. In the literature, some studies document the worsening of OCD. However, in many studies, the type of treatment, the detection time, and the intervention period are not well-specified. These results confirm the effectiveness of CBT/ERP as an elective treatment for OCD through a specific intervention procedure.
ABSTRACT
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine had a significant impact on mental health which resulted in an increase of anxiety and depression in adult, child and adolescent clinical populations. Less is known about the potential effect of pandemic on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) so there is a lack of review work to illustrate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on OCD. Purpose: The main objective is to review all the empirical contributions published after March 2020 that dealt with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on OCD in adults, children and adolescents, investigating the state-of-the-art literature concerning the impact on OCD and detailing limitations. Methods: The literature search was conducted using PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, and Google Scholar. This review analyzed all studies from January 2020 to 8 January 2021, focusing on clinical populations of children, adolescents, and adults with OCD. Results: A total of 102 articles were screened, resulting in the identification of 64 full-text articles to be further scrutinized. Upon closer examination, there was consensus that 39 articles met the study inclusion criteria and 14 of these were selected for study. Analysis of the results revealed that COVID-19 had an impact on OCD in both adults and young people and seems to have caused exacerbation of symptoms, especially of the contamination/washing subtypes. Eight studies in adult samples showed an increase in the severity of obsessive-compulsive symptoms; two studies underlined a minimal impact of COVID-19 on OCD patients and one study showed a slight improvement in symptoms. Two out of three studies on children and adolescents showed an exacerbation of OCD and a worsening even in the presence of an ongoing treatment. Conclusions: The studies reviewed are few. There are more studies on adult OCD than on children and adolescents. The results are controversial: few studies examined OCD subtypes; in most studies the typology of treatment was not clear and the samples covered a wide age range; a large number of studies did not use the same monitoring period or quantitative measures, both of which make it difficult to compare or rely on the results.
