1,721,000 research outputs found
Assisted Reproductive Treatment: the role of Alexithymia, Romantic Attachment, Marital Relationship on Couple’s Quality of Life
No full textIntroduction: Fertility problems can cause serious implications for couples’ wellbeing. Aims of the study were to evaluate: possible differences between women and men in quality of life, alexithymia, romantic attachment and quality of marital relationship during an Assisted Reproductive Treatment (ART); predictive effects of these variables on quality of life of women and men. Methods: 84 women (age m=38.1 sd=5.5) and 25 men (m=37.5 sd=5.6) participated in the study. At the beginning of ART women and men completed: socio-demographic questionnaire, Fertility Quality of Life (FertiQuoL), 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), Experience in Close Relationship-Revised (ECR-R) and Couple Relation Inventory (CRI). Results: Differences in FertiQuoL Total (p=.02) Emotional (p=.001), Mind-Body (p=.05) and Tolerability (p=.001) subscales scores emerged in the direction of a lower quality of life in women. Furthermore, women scored significantly higher in TAS-20 Difficulty in Identifying Feelings (DIF;p=.04) and CRI Idealization (p=.01), whereas men scored significantly higher in CRI Erotic Fantasy (p=.04). Several significant associations among quality of life, alexithymia, quality of marital relationship and attachment dimensions were reported in women and men. Regression analysis showed the predictive effect of DIF (p=001) and CRI Attunement with partner (p=.01) on women’s quality of life. Conclusions: The findings support a more severe effect of infertility and its treatments on women than men. The findings highlight the predictive effect of the difficulty in identifying feeling and attunement with the partner on the quality of life of women during the ART. Clinical implication will be discussed
Effects of an expressive writing intervention in a group of public employees subjected to work relocation
No full textBACKGROUND: Pennebaker’s writing technique has yielded good results on health, psychological and performance dimen- sions. In spite of the positive outcomes, the technique has rarely been applied directly within the workplace and its effects on burnout have never been tested. METHOD: 18 public employees subjected to work relocation were asked to write about their present work situation or another difficult event of their life (Writing Group), while another 17 were not assigned any writing task (Control Group). OBJECTIVE: To assess whether there was an improvement in burnout, alexithymia and psychological well-being in the Writing Group compared with the baseline measurement and the Control Group. RESULTS: While the baseline levels in the Writing and Control Groups in the 3 dimensions considered were similar, scores in the Writing Group at both a second (1 month after the end of the procedure) and third measurement (7 months after the end) improved when compared with the baseline, whereas those in the Control Group worsened. CONCLUSIONS: Pennebaker’s writing technique appears to promote adaptive coping strategies in stressful situations, and to increase occupational and psychological well-being as well as the ability to process emotions. It also appears to buffer the negative effects of work-related stress
University Culture: A quali-quantitative study on the emotional representations of online learning by psychology university students
No full textThe pandemic of covid-19 has led to the conversion from face-to-face to online learning in almost every university in the world. Online learning was perceived by students as an opportunity and an impediment to the learning process and an obstacle for social contact. The main aim of this research was to explore the representations of distance learning by university students. We collected 127 interviews from university students and used the paradigm of Emotional Text Mining (EMT) for their analysis. Three factors (Learning Process, University Life, Blended learning) and four clusters (Being in a Relationship, Online learning, Missed Rituality, Process of Adapting) were identified. The factors highlight an unconscious defence mechanism which "separates" the reality of online learning (without relationships) from the reality of the face-to-face learning (with relationships). The clusters show how university students represent online learning as useful at a practical level, but as an obstacle to social contact and a sense of belonging to the university culture. In addition, the interpretation of the clusters reveals an immature process of adaptation of students to the post-pandemic reality. All these findings highlight face-to-face learning as a place for interaction and social sharing and necessary to feel integrated in university culture
Infertility and Assisted Reproductive Treatment: The Role of Alexithymia, Romantic Attachment and Marital Relationship on the Quality of Life
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Tipo A, Tipo C, Stile di Attaccamento e alessitimia: studio empirico su 240 studenti universitari.
No full textThe culture of organ donation in the italian newspapers
No full textOrgan donation is an extremely important issue as patients on the waiting lists for transplantation
die every year due to the lack of organs. While in Europe, Spain has the highest transplantation
rate, in Italy the number of eligible donors who have expressed their will reaches 3,467,465,
compared to 49,501,577 eligible donors, and the law that regulates organ donation (n. 91/1999)
providing for silent consent has never been applied. The choice to donate vary according to
situations: from the healthy citizens’ individual choice to the difficult choice of the family, while they
are losing a beloved one.
Among other factors, the system of values connected with organ donation and transplantation is a
relevant factor often facilitating or hindering this choice. As shown by the literature, the awareness
campaigns are based on the ‘‘gift of life’’ discourse in order to promote the benefits of organ
donation among members of the general public and to improve donation rates. In fact, many
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donors have a supportive social network that motivates them and spreads the idea.
In order to understand the system of values connected to organ donation, we performed an
analysis of the Italian newspapers’ discourses on this topic in the last five years. A sample of 189
most relevant articles containing the multiword "donazione di organi" was collected from the
Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica online archives. The large size corpus underwent a
multivariate analysis (cluster analysis with a bisecting k-means algorithm on the context unit per
keyword matrix and a correspondence analysis on the cluster per keyword matrix) in order to
identify the representations and the categories characterizing the cultural symbolization of
donation. The results highlight the ambivalence characterizing the organ donation. The elements
organizing the cultural symbolization counterpose the life to the death and the family to the
collectivity. In line with the literature, the choice to donate reflects the representation of donation as
a “gift of life”, but it also recalls the impossible choice of the family in mourning to “give the life
away”, and the complexity of the “living death” characterizing transplantation, in which the death
person is reduced to a living organ
Organ donation: A study of its representations among organ procurement coordinators and their staff
No full textMaking the life-saving treatment of transplantation available to patients who need it requires the cooperation of individuals and families who decide to donate organs. Healthcare workers navigate organizational, bureaucratic and relational aspects of this process, including cases in which a deceased individual has not specified a wish about organ donation and their surviving family members must be asked for consent to donate during a delicate phase of mourning. This research aims to understand the experience of these health workers regarding their work. We collected 18 interviews from organ donation healthcare workers in five of the major hospitals in Rome. The transcripts underwent a multivariate text analysis to identify the representations of organ donation and the symbolic categories organizing the practice of these workers. This research elucidated a symbolic space constructed of four factors: The "Context", involving family and health workers; the "Work purposes", including the procedures and the relationships; the "Transplant", which involves omnipotence and limits; the "Donation", which involves ideals versus reality. The characterizing elements of these representations, belonging to organ donation workers, are the prestige, the certification of brain death, the communication, the transplant, and the salvation. In the lives of these workers, to be a "bridge between life and death" evokes feelings of prestige rather than difficult feelings associated with confronting one's limitations. These aspects concern the difficulties met by the health staff in their work, and they are useful elements to design a focused training and support program for organ donor workers
COVID-19 post-traumatic stress disorder: the role of ACEs, alexithymia, and attachment in the Italian population
No full textOBJECTIVE: The COVID-19 pandemic is considered a collective traumatic event. Several studies have highlighted high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms among the general population during the pandemic. The general aim of this research is to explore the role of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), alexithymia, and anxiety and avoidance attachment dimensions as risk factors that are making individuals more vulnerable to PTSD-COVID-related symptoms. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: The COVID-19- PTSD Questionnaire, 20-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire, and the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised Form (ECR-R) were administered to 224 participants who were between 18 and 65 years of age, and residents of Italy. Socio-demographic variables were also collected. The data was collected between October 2021 and March 2022. RESULTS: The findings of the Spearman correlation analysis showed several significant associations between alexithymia, attachment dimensions, and PTSD symptoms related to COVID-19 diagnosis and age. A multivariable logistic regression model was performed using the COVID-19-PTSD total scores over/under the clinical cut-off as dependent variables and age, gender, anxiety and avoidance attachment scores, ACEs, and total alexithymia as independent variables, with alexithymia total score (B = .071; p = .001), ECR-R Anxiety (B = .034; p = .001) and ECR-R Avoidance (B = -.033; p = .024) showing to respectively increase and reduce the possibility of reporting clinical symptomatology. CONCLUSIONS: Emotional regulation and attachment have been shown to be risk factors for COVID-19 PTSD symptomatology. Focused intervention programs and emotional education can be useful tools for developing protective factors in the general population
Can alexithymia be assessed through an interview in adolescents? The Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia: Reliability, concurrent validity, discriminant validity, and relationships with emotional-behavioral symptoms
No full textAlexithymia is connected to adolescents' psychopathology, but the current methods of assessment present limitations. The Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA) was developed to overcome the limits of the main used self-rating scale in adults, but no studies investigated its feasibility with adolescents. This study involved 95 community adolescents aged 12-19 years. Adolescents were assessed with the TSIA, the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), the Verbal Comprehension Index of the WISC-IV for verbal skills, and the Child Behavior Checklist and Youth Self Report for emotional-behavioral symptoms. The aims were to investigate the TSIA internal consistency, concurrent validity with the TAS-20, discriminant validity with participants' verbal skills, and relationships with emotional-behavioral symptoms. TSIA showed good internal consistency, concurrent validity with the TAS-20 (except for factor DDF), and independence by participants' verbal skills, but few relationships with emotional-behavioral symptoms. In conclusion, TSIA showed some good psychometric proprieties but little convergence with research findings obtained with the TAS-20, suggesting the need for further research to check the feasibility of using the TSIA with adolescents. Meanwhile, a precautionary multi-method assessment of alexithymia is recommended
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