Suchergebnisse

This article examines how the Italian legal system regulates the criminal responsibility of persons who have committed offenses while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. It points out the legal system's limitations and the options available to the expert in the context of decision-making by the forensic psychiatrist. In general, Italian law regards persons who have committed offenses while under the influence of drugs as fully criminal responsible. It excludes only those whose acts relate to involuntary consumption or to a state of severe chronic intoxication. It equates the consumption of drugs to the consumption of alcohol, and gives the court the option of judging such behaviors as socially dangerous, thus opening the gates of special criminal mental institutions. The overall result is far from satisfactory and new and revised legislation is badly needed.

Insanity definition and the threshold for satisfying its legal criteria tend to vary depending on the jurisdictions. Yet, in Western countries, the legal standards for insanity often rely on the presence of cognitive and/or volitional impairment of the defendant at crime time. Despite some efforts having been made to guide and structure criminal responsibility evaluations, a valid instrument that could be useful to guide forensic psychiatrists' criminal responsibility assessments in different jurisdictions is lacking. This is a gap that needs to be addressed, considering the significant forensic and procedural implications of psychiatric evaluations. In addition, differences in methodology used in insanity assessments may also have consequences for the principle of equal rights for all citizens before the law, which should be guaranteed in the European Union. We developed an instrument, the Defendant's Insanity Assessment Support Scale (DIASS), which can be useful to support, structure, and guide the insanity assessment across different jurisdictions, in order to improve reliability and consistency of such evaluations.

Insanity definition and the threshold for satisfying its legal criteria tend to vary depending on the jurisdictions. Yet, in Western countries, the legal standards for insanity often rely on the presence of cognitive and/or volitional impairment of the defendant at crime time. Despite some efforts having been made to guide and structure criminal responsibility evaluations, a valid instrument that could be useful to guide forensic psychiatrists' criminal responsibility assessments in different jurisdictions is lacking. This is a gap that needs to be addressed, considering the significant forensic and procedural implications of psychiatric evaluations. In addition, differences in methodology used in insanity assessments may also have consequences for the principle of equal rights for all citizens before the law, which should be guaranteed in the European Union. We developed an instrument, the Defendant's Insanity Assessment Support Scale (DIASS), which can be useful to support, structure, and guide the insanity assessment across different jurisdictions, in order to improve reliability and consistency of such evaluations.

Insanity definition and the threshold for satisfying its legal criteria tend to vary depending on the jurisdictions. Yet, in Western countries, the legal standards for insanity often rely on the presence of cognitive and/or volitional impairment of the defendant at crime time. Despite some efforts having been made to guide and structure criminal responsibility evaluations, a valid instrument that could be useful to guide forensic psychiatrists' criminal responsibility assessments in different jurisdictions is lacking. This is a gap that needs to be addressed, considering the significant forensic and procedural implications of psychiatric evaluations. In addition, differences in methodology used in insanity assessments may also have consequences for the principle of equal rights for all citizens before the law, which should be guaranteed in the European Union. We developed an instrument, the Defendant's Insanity Assessment Support Scale (DIASS), which can be useful to support, structure, and guide the insanity assessment across different jurisdictions, in order to improve reliability and consistency of such evaluations.

Purpose
Violence against health-care workers represents a public health issue that affects individuals, organizations and may have legal consequences. In Italy, workplace violence (WPV) constitutes a "sentinel event", defined as a particularly serious, potentially avoidable adverse event, which may result in death or serious harm to health-care workers, and which leads to a loss of public confidence in the health-care system. In 2007, the Italian Ministry of Health issued Recommendation No. 8, "Preventing acts of violence against health workers", inviting each Italian Hospital to develop procedures and guidelines for dealing with and preventing acts of aggression. This study aimed at investigating the appropriateness of the procedures and guidelines developed by the Italian hospitals.


Design/methodology/approach
Procedures on preventing violence against health-care workers published by 29 Italian Hospitals between 2007 and 2020 were collected retrospectively via Web searches and further evaluated according to their compliance with the 2007 Italian ministerial recommendations.


Findings
A total of 9 documents out of 29 were fully compliant with the 2007 Ministerial Recommendation, 18 were partially compliant, while 2 were totally non-compliant. A total of 24 documents explicitly addressed the management of verbal and physical aggression, whereas 20 set appropriate training on de-escalation techniques for nurses and medical staff. Psychological support was fully considered in 11 procedures, partially considered in 14, while not included at all in 4.


Originality/value
Public procedures on preventing violence against health-care workers in Italian hospitals are scarcely compliant with the Ministerial Recommendations. The absence of specific instructions to address the needs at territorial level and the lack of support provided to health-care workers is a weak point in the effective management of WPV.

Despite the acknowledged influence of cognition on patients' capacity to consent to treatment, the specific neuropsychological domains involved remain elusive, as does the role of executive functions. We investigated possible associations between executive functions and decisional capacity in a sample of acute psychiatric inpatients. Patients were recruited and evaluated through the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Treatment (MacCAT-T), the 24-item Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). Patients with poor executive functioning performed worse in MacCAT understanding, appreciation, and expression of a choice, compared with good performers. These findings point to the importance of cognition in decisional capacity processes. In addition, the strong association found between learning abilities and informed consent decision-making provide empirical evidence indicating possible cognitive enhancement strategies that may improve psychiatric patients' competency.

The uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has called for unprecedented measures, to the extent that the Italian government has imposed a quarantine on the entire country. Quarantine has a huge impact and can cause considerable psychological strain. The present study aims to establish the prevalence of psychiatric symptoms and identify risk and protective factors for psychological distress in the general population. An online survey was administered from 18–22 March 2020 to 2766 participants. Multivariate ordinal logistic regression models were constructed to examine the associations between sociodemographic variables; personality traits; depression, anxiety, and stress. Female gender, negative affect, and detachment were associated with higher levels of depression, anxiety, and stress. Having an acquaintance infected was associated with increased levels of both depression and stress, whereas a history of stressful situations and medical problems was associated with higher levels of depression and anxiety. Finally, those with a family member infected and young person who had to work outside their domicile presented higher levels of anxiety and stress, respectively. This epidemiological picture is an important benchmark for identifying persons at greater risk of suffering from psychological distress and the results are useful for tailoring psychological interventions targeting the post-traumatic nature of the distress.

Background: Immigrants in Europe appear to be at higher risk of psychiatric coercive interventions. Involuntary psychiatric hospitalization poses significant ethical and clinical challenges. Nonetheless, reasons for migration and other risk factors for involuntary treatment were rarely addressed in previous studies. The aims of this study are to clarify whether immigrant patients with acute mental disorders are at higher risk to be involuntarily admitted to hospital and to explore clinical and migratory factors associated with involuntary treatment. Methods: In this cross-sectional matched sample study, we compared the rates of involuntary treatment in a sample of first-generation immigrants admitted in a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit of a large metropolitan academic hospital to their age-, gender-, and psychiatric diagnosis-matched native counterparts. Clinical, sociodemographic, and migratory variables were collected. The Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale-expanded (BPRS-E) and the Clinical Global Impression-Severity (CGI-S) scale were administered. McNemar test was used for paired categorical variables and a binary logistic regression analysis was performed. Results: A total of 234 patients were included in the analysis. Involuntary treatment rates were significantly higher in immigrants as compared to their matched natives (32% vs. 24% respectively; p < .001). Among immigrants, involuntary hospitalization was found to be more frequent in those patients whose length of stay in Italy was less than 2 years (OR = 4.2, 95% CI [1.4–12.7]). Conclusion: Recently arrived immigrants appear to be at higher risk of involuntary admission. Since coercive interventions can be traumatic and negatively affect outcomes, strategies to prevent this phenomenon are needed.

The current study aimed at increasing our understanding of the psychological impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on undergraduate students, particularly with respect to the association between personality traits; defense mechanisms (DMs); depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms (DASSs); and compliance with the government recommended health measures. A sample of 1,427 Italian undergraduate students were administered the Personality Inventory for the DSM-5—Brief Form; the Defense Style Questionnaire-40; and the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale-21. Compliance with the COVID-19 behavioral recommendations was measured through a 10-item survey measure. Results showed that immature DMs and internalizing personality traits (i.e., detachment, negative affect, psychoticism) were risk factors of DASSs. Furthermore, subjects with higher levels of DASSs appeared less compliant with the health measures recommended by the Italian government. Experts may use these results to identify and subsequently support (via the Internet) young subjects at greater risk of mental health problems as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The global pandemic caused by a new strain of Coronavirus has brought the Italian government to adopt quarantine, isolation, and lockdown strategies as restrictive measures to reduce the virus spread. Being forced to stay at home could significantly increase the likelihood of episodes of home-based violence and could also be accompanied by a limited possibility of complaints or defense by the victim. The present study aimed to document, through the use of newspaper articles, the characteristics of domestic violence during the lockdown period related to COVID-19 in Italy (from 9 March 2020 up to 18 May 2020) and compare the results with the same period in 2019. The results showed an increase in domestic violence during the lockdown period compared to the same period the year before and highlighted the differences between the dynamics and violent behavior between the two periods examined. The results and limitations of this research are discussed with reference to the literature.

On 24 February, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the order to invade neighbouring Ukraine; a typical trend during the war is considering events in a one-sided way, emphasising the exclusive contribution of one opponent over the other for the outbreak of war. War may trigger the experience of emotions, such as anger, shame, and disgust. The present study reproduces previous studies on the influence of emotional regulation in support of aggressive reactions (AR) in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. A questionnaire referring to the Russian–Ukrainian conflict has been implemented and spread in the Italian territory. A multiple moderated mediation model was proposed to evaluate the effect of emotional cognitive reappraisal on the propensity for AR, including conflict-related emotions (anger, shame, disgust) as mediators and political alignment and the appraisal of one's own emotions subscale of the brief emotional intelligence scale as moderators. The results show that cognitive reappraisal of emotions has a negative effect on AR; moreover, recognising and regulating emotions decreases anger, while taking sides with Ukraine or not siding seems to have an effect on AR depending on the emotion felt (anger or shame). The results are discussed according to the current literature on the topic, highlighting the practical implications and limits of the research.

Background: On February 2020, the novel coronavirus (2019nCoV) epidemic began in Italy. In order to contain the spread of the virus, the Italian government adopted emergency measures nationwide, including closure of schools and universities, workplaces and subsequently lockdown. This survey was carried out among Italian undergraduates to explore their level of knowledge about the epidemic and the behaviors they adopted during the lockdown. Methods: An electronic questionnaire was administered to the students attending three Italian universities. Results: A good level of knowledge about the epidemic and its control was registered in the sample, mainly among students attending life sciences degree courses. The majority of the students did not modify their diet and smoking habits, while a great part of the sample reported a decrease in physical activity (PA). Conclusions: Students from life sciences courses showed a higher awareness regarding the infection and the control measures. The lockdown caused an important reduction of PA. Preventive interventions should transform the restrictive measures also as an opportunity to improve lifestyle.

Background. Suicide in international police is 2-3-fold that of the general population. Risk factors include suicidal ideation, diagnosis of mood or post-traumatic stress disorders, family/psychological problems, suffered abuse, alcohol use, service suspension, and stigma. A false stigma-related myth is to believe that suicide does not cause concern within military settings. Methods. We administered post-training to 6,103 Italian Police workers a 30-item questionnaire to assess the perception of suicidal phenomena. We conducted descriptive statistics and principal component analysis (PCA). Results. PCA identified six main areas, i.e., interest and multifactoriality; need for new preventive interventions; emotional reaction to suicide; utility of current preventive interventions; indifference and minimization; intervention difficulties. Conclusions. The questionnaire showed content validity and consistency in investigating perceptions about suicide in the State Police. Data synthesis showed a mature approach and appropriate perception of the suicide problem on behalf of Italian State Police workers.