Psychosocial factors of risk and protection associated with juvenile cyberbullying victimization: results from an international multi-city study (International Self-Report Delinquency Study 3, ISRD3).

The growing use of technologies makes it easy for children and young people to access or produce offensive content, giving rise to a new form of bullying: cyberbullying. Several individual and environmental protection and risk factors are involved with cyberbullying victimization. The present study aims to provide some empirical data that can help in understanding cyberbullying and in the formulation of programmes for its prevention. For this purpose, the data of the ISRD3 (International Self-Report Delinquency Study 3) survey were used. Data show that, for strategies of prevention and intervention to be effective, they should consider multiple systems, such as the family, peers, school and community.

The risk of early suicide and diagnostic issues in Cotard's syndrome associated to self-starvation.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Cotard's syndrome is a rare neuropsychiatric disorder in which the patient holds nihilistic delusions concerning his/her own existence, including the conviction of being dead or having lost parts of the body. There are occasional reports of Cotard's syndrome being accompanied by nutritional deficiencies or self-starvation. METHODS: The authors describe the peculiar case of a 40-year-old man who developed severe malnutrition within a few months. At first, a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa was made. The man was admitted to the hospital where other significant psychopathological symptoms emerged. RESULTS: One of the consequences of Cotard's syndrome is self-starvation because of negation of existence of self. The presented case points out that, although Cotard's syndrome has been reported to be associated with various organic conditions and other forms of psychopathology, loss of appetite and nutritional deficits can erroneously lead to mistake this diagnosis for anorexia nervosa, thus underestimating the high risk of these patients of committing suicide following hospital discharge. CONCLUSION: Taking into account its rarity and possible subdiagnosis, as a distinct clinical entity the aim of this case report is to emphasize that these patients may initially be addressed to general practitioners, due to the dysmetabolic consequences of malnutrition, rather than to psychiatrists. An early recognition of signs indicative of Cotard's syndrome can be vital to prevent the situation from worsening. In fact, missed diagnoses can put these patients at an higher risk of suicidal behaviour.

Female Murderers and Stigma: Coping With the "Bad Woman" Label.

Among the stereotypes of female delinquency, the article focuses on "bad women" par excellence, that is to say, those convicted of murder who have not benefited from the possibility of being perceived and portrayed as "victims" because of their unorthodox femininity. The aim of the study was to understand how the label of "bad woman" is incorporated into the narration of identity of five women condemned for murder; to this end, we focus on the narratives implemented in order to cope with the stigma (narrative criminology), tracing them back to their past and the traumatic experiences they lived (psychosocial criminology). Four narratives emerge: the denied stigma, the disregarded stigma, the despairing stigma and the processed stigma. Psychosocial criminology consents to "go beyond" the surface and to find a "fil rouge" that can explain the discrepancies and the contradictions found in the way of coping with the imposed label.

The mourning process and "living with the dead": Two case reports and a review of the literature.

The discovery of mummified bodies in domestic settings is not unusual in the medico-legal context. It is often a marker of social isolation, even in our urban modern society, and usually occurs among elderly people living alone or in precarious conditions. However, bereaved subjects can sometimes be found managing their grief by deliberately keeping the corpses of their loved ones at home. Investigation of these atypical cases can be challenging and often requires a multidisciplinary effort by different forensic specialists. We report two cases of people who lived for several months with the mummified remains of a relative. In both cases, the judge ordered a forensic psychiatry assessment of the survivors' competency and the reasons for this peculiar behavior, which is regarded as abnormal in our society. Case 1 describes a shared psychosis, which developed out of a condition of extreme seclusion of the entire family. Case 2 shows that even a mild personality disorder on which a series of traumatic events operates can trigger psychotic decompensation, causing extreme denial of the reality of death. The analysis of these cases contributes to our knowledge of the scantly studied phenomenon of "Living with the Dead" and raises questions about the psychopathology behind it. It is useful to identify subjects who are more prone to developing this "deviant" behavior, in order to distinguish people with mental illness from those who merely want to profit from the death of a loved one.

The need for an interdisciplinary approach in forensic sciences: perspectives from a peculiar case of mummification.

The finding of a mummified body raises many problems, also because of the limits of the medico-legal investigations in case of mummification. Psychological autopsy and behavioral analysis have demonstrated a significant impact in case of equivocal death. The mummified corpse of a woman was found sealed in a wardrobe during the death investigation of a 36-year-old man, later discovered to be the woman's son. The woman's corpse was well preserved and no external injuries were found. Autopsy could not ascertain the cause of death. The state of the premises and the writings on the walls offered an opportunity to investigate the man's psychological profile and to better understand how the events might have taken place. The role of an accurate investigative analysis of the crime scene is a cornerstone of forensic pathology and the case presented underlies the importance of an interdisciplinary approach in forensic sciences.

Cesare Lombroso: Methodological ambiguities and brilliant intuitions.

This paper on Cesare Lombroso aims to assess his contribution to the criminological sciences. Although much praised worldwide, Lombroso was also the target of scathing criticism and unmitigated condemnation. Examination of Lombroso's method of data collection and analysis reveals his weakness. Indeed, his approach was extremely naive, simplistic and uncritical, aimed at irrefutably demonstrating the hypotheses that he championed, without exercising the methodological caution that was already beginning to characterize scientific research in his day. However, we must acknowledge that his biological theories of crime are undergoing new developments as a result of the recent success of biological psychiatry. On the other hand we should recognize that his work was not limited to his biological central theory; rather, it covered a range of cues and concepts, for the most part ignored, that demonstrate his interest in the economic, cultural and social factors that impact on crime. For these reasons, Lombroso appears to have anticipated many modern conceptions regarding delinquent behavior and criminal justice, such as those of restorative justice, the so-called "situational" theories of criminal behavior and white collar crime.

Criminal profiling as a plotting activity based on abductive processes.

In this article the authors analyze the nature and aims of criminal profiling from a theoretical point of view. The need to become increasingly "scientific" has given rise to the modern approaches of profiling, which have been particularly successful in cases of serial homicides and sex crimes, given that compulsive (perverse) acts, because of their ritual nature, have been described as being more easily foreseeable and presumably linkable to the psychological and even personal characteristics of a given criminal. On this basis, the authors analyze profiling from an epistemological point of view and show how, in the concrete activity of profiling, profilers depart from the "certainty" of the scientific models (those that are based on deductive-inductive processes); the epistemological basis of reasoning changes as there is no longer an induction-deduction model but rather an abductive model (as conceived and explained by Peirce) in which the importance of plotting (the weaving of a narrative) becomes greater.

The narrative structure of psychiatric reports.

The present contribution illustrates the findings of a research about the narrative structure of psychiatric expertise. We have analysed a sample of nine expertises, using the methodology proposed by Roland Barthes in his book S/Z, in which he applies it to Honoré de Balzac's "Sarrasine". Barthes suggests that every narrative is characterized by the presence of five codes (hermeneutical, proairetic, semantic, symbolic and referential): we have searched for them in the expertises, but we have also observed the presence of many lapsus calami. As for our results, we have interpreted the massive presence of symbolic code in an expertise as a proof of the elaboration of the horror elicited by crime in the expert's narrative and, on the other side, the presence of referential code as the proof of the incapacity to treat such feeling and the necessity to defend himself from it. In this vision, lapsuses arise when the expert is astonished by the horror of the crime, and does not succeed in elaborating it either by using symbolic code or through his cultural resources (referential code). Finally, some reflections are made upon the difficulty for the voice of the defendant to be heard in the texts written about him.