The DAVAd: A Narrative Tool to Explore the Early Stages of the Adoptive Bond

The DAVAd (the first bond process diary) is a new narrative tool created to accompany the adoptive couple during their trip to the land of the child/children to whom they have been matched. The tool presented is the first to explore what happens, in term of events and emotional experiences, during the first meetings between the parental couple and the child/children. This period is clinically relevant as the ideal is compared with the real. The DAVAd supports the parental couple in focusing on their experiences and their meanings and learning to deal with the complexity related to the bound construction. Moreover, the DAVAd allows the clinical psychologist in detecting and treating, if necessary, the familiar dynamics, favoring the prevention of the distress. A clinical case that utilizes the DAVAd will be presented, to enlighten the way its compilation can be used by researchers and clinicians

Infertility and assisted reproduction: legislative and cultural evolution in Italy. Infertilità e procreazione assistita: evoluzione legislativa e culturale in Italia

The social representation of the infertility coming out from the national newspapers has been explored in relation to the enactment of the Law 40/2004 and the 2005 referendum. All the articles (n=731), published in the last 15 years by the highest circulation Italian newspapers, have been collected in a corpus (token=360345) that underwent a multivariate analysis of textual data. Results show a difficulty in complementing together the mind and the body. The “biologic” is represented as the place of the technical and medical intervention while the “psycho-social” is conceived as the place of the family storytelling of the personal experiences of infertility and the public ethical debate on it. Before the law, newspapers deal with the theme of the family experience probably supporting the law enactment. After the referendum this thematic is dismissed and the theme of infertility as a pathology to treat emerges, bringing back infertility to the medical issu

Social environment and attitudes toward COVID-19 anti-contagious measures: an explorative study from Italy

Social and cultural aspects (i.e., political decision making, discourses in the public sphere, and people’s mindsets) played a crucial role in the ways people responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. Framed with the Semiotic-Cultural Psychological Theory (SCPT), the present work aims to explore how individual ways of making sense of their social environment affected individuals’ perception of government measures aimed at managing the pandemic and the adherence to such measures. An online survey was administered from January to April 2021 to the Italian population. Retrieved questionnaires (N = 378) were analyzed through a Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) to detect the factorial dimensions underpinning (dis)similarities in the respondents’ ways of interpreting their social environment. Extracted factors were interpreted as markers of Latent Dimensions of Sense (LDSs) organizing respondents’ worldviews. Finally, three regression models tested the role of LDSs in supporting the individual satisfaction with the measures adopted to contain the social contagion defined at national level, individual adherence to the containment measures and the perception of the population’s adherence to them. Results highlight that all the three measures are associated with a negative view of the social environment characterized by a lack of confidence in public institutions (health system, government), public roles and other people. Findings are discussed on the one hand to shed light on the role of deep-rooted cultural views in defining personal evaluations of government measures and adherence capacity. On the other hand, we suggest that taking into account people’s meaning-making can guide public health officials and policy makers to comprehend what favors or hinders adaptive responses to emergencies or social crises

How socio-institutional contexts and cultural worldviews relate to COVID-19 acceptance rates: A representative study in Italy

Rationale Despite its importance to counter the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination has raised hesitation in large segments of the population. This hesitation makes it important to understand the mechanisms underlying vaccine acceptance. To this end, the study adopts the Semiotic Cultural Psychology Theory, holding that social behaviors – and therefore, vaccination acceptance – depend on the cultural meanings in terms of which people interpret the social world. Objective The study aims at estimating the impact a) of the way people interpret the socio-institutional context of the pandemic and b) of the underlying cultural worldviews on vaccine acceptance. More particularly, the study tested the three following hypotheses. a) The meanings grounding the interpretation of the socio-institutional framework – that is, trust in institutions and political values – are an antecedent of vaccination acceptance. b) The impact of these meanings is moderated by the cultural worldviews (operationalized as symbolic universes). And c), the magnitude of the symbolic universes’ moderator effect depends on the uncertainty to which the respondent is exposed. The exposure to uncertainty was estimated in terms of socioeconomic status – the lower the status, the high the exposure to uncertainty. Methods An Italian representative sample (N = 3020) completed a questionnaire, measuring vaccination acceptance, the meanings attributed to the socio-institutional context – that is, political values and trust in institutions – and symbolic universes. Results The findings were consistent with the hypotheses. a) Structural equation modelling proved that vaccine acceptance was predicted by trust in institutions. b) Multigroup analysis revealed that symbolic universes moderated the correlation between trust in institutions and vaccine acceptance. And c), the moderation effect of symbolic universes proved to occur only in the segment of lower socio-economic status (i.e., the group exposed to higher uncertainty). Conclusions Vaccination acceptance is not only a medical issue; it is also dependent upon the rationalization of the socio-institutional context. Implications for the promotion of vaccination acceptance are discussed

The Generational Shift in the Family Business: Defining the Condition to Plan the Intervention

Abstract In Italy, family businesses account for 85% of the national GDP but, frequently, their "health" has been critically at risk at the time of the "generational shift", that is the moment when a business is passed from one generation to another. The Italian Association of Family Businesses, for example, observes that out of 100 Italian family businesses, 50% reach the second generation and only 15% pass onto the third. Due to this, the European Commission (1998-2003) has recom-mended specific studies and a vast amount of literature can be found on the sub-ject. In the first part of this chapter we discuss a review of the literature, focusing par-ticularly on the "generational shift",which can be perceived as a period of "trauma care" or as an opportunity for business development. According to this definition of the generational shift, in the second part of the chapter,we present the consulting phase of an intervention carried out by a training company, and initiatedby an entrepreneur close to retirement. We address the entrepreneur’s criteria in deciding to ask for a company intervention in order to make sense of the relationship between the client, the user and the psychologist. Interviews were conducted with the entrepreneur and the heirs in order to highlight the elements guiding theactors’ interpretation of the situation. The contribution that psychology can offer in a multidisciplinary team is the recognition of these elements in order to redefine the setting with the client.Finally, we discuss the relationship between the health, nomothetic and hydrographic approaches in relation to a case study of the generational shift

Separarsi dal trattamento:una ricerca in un SerT

La prospettiva dell "ritenzione in trattamento" rappresenta oggi uno dei format più seguiti dai SerT. L'articolo presenta una ricerca volta a comprendere quali elementi favoriscano la chiusura del trattamento da parte di alcuni utenti