1,720,956 research outputs found
Lived experience in Italian mental health services: a national survey of peer support and co-production practices
Full text linkBackground: Peer support has become a cornerstone of recovery-oriented mental health systems worldwide, with increasing recognition of its value in promoting recovery, empowerment, and inclusion. In Italy, despite a long-standing tradition of community-based care, the integration of peer support services (PSSs) remains fragmented and understudied. Methods: A national cross-sectional online survey was conducted between January and February 2025 targeting all Italian Mental Health Departments (MHDs). The survey explored the presence, organization, and perceived impact of peer support and co-production practices. Results: A total of 61 out of 135 MHDs (45%) responded. Among them, 55.7% reported implementing peer support initiatives, primarily within community-based services. Peer support workers (PSWs) were generally perceived as effective in fostering recovery and reducing stigma. However, major barriers included lack of formal recognition, insufficient funding, and cultural resistance (e.g., reluctance among some professionals to acknowledge experiential knowledge or to integrate non-clinical roles into multidisciplinary teams). Co-production practices were reported by more than half of the MHDs, though they remained largely consultative. Conclusions: Peer support and co-production are emerging within in Italy's mental health system but face substantial structural and cultural barriers. National frameworks and dedicated resources are required to support sustainable implementation and the full integration of experiential knowledge into mental health services
Assessing the effectiveness and the feasibility of a group-based treatment for self-stigma in people with mental disorders in routine mental health services in North-East Italy: study protocol for a pragmatic multisite randomized controlled trial
Full text linkBackground: Self-stigma refers to the process whereby individuals with mental disorders internalize negative societal attitudes and misconceptions about mental health conditions, potentially affecting their sense of self-worth and identity. This internalization can significantly impact various aspects of life, including treatment engagement, personal relationships, and overall well-being. Narrative Enhancement and Cognitive Therapy (NECT) was developed in the United States to counteract self-stigma and has been supported by multiple randomized controlled trials. However, NECT has not yet been implemented in Italy or within a public mental health system grounded in community psychiatry. This study aims to evaluate the efficacy and feasibility of the Italian version of the NECT within the public mental health sector in a large part of North-East Italy. Methods and analysis: This pragmatic, multisite, superiority, randomized, wait-list controlled trial with two parallel arms will recruit over four hundred patients with severe mental disorders from 26 public community-based mental health centers in North-East Italy. The experimental intervention, NECT, consists of 20 group-based sessions to reduce self-stigma. The study will assess NECT's impact on several psychological dimensions, including self-stigma levels (primary outcome), self-esteem, hope, empowerment, recovery perception, mental well-being, and stigma stress (secondary outcomes). Feasibility will be evaluated by collecting data on participant adherence and treatment implementation, including eligibility screening, participation rates, intervention completion, exposure levels, and reasons for dropout. Discussion: The findings of this research are expected to contribute to the understanding of effective treatments for patients with mental disorders, particularly those burdened by high levels of self-stigma, and to improve their recovery outcomes. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov; Identifier: NCT06567145
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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