The role of positivity on quality of life outcomes in patients with chronic diseases

Background: Positivity is a general tendency to react to life experiences in a positive way, a pervasive optimistic view of oneself, one’s life, and one’s future, associated with greater positive affection and lower functional impairments. The aim of the study was to examine the role of positivity in predicting the length of hospitalization in patients operated of thoracic surgery and physical and mental health in patients born with Anorectal Malformations (ARM). Methods: patients born with ARM were enrolled from the Italian Association for Anorectal Malformations and patients scheduled for thoracic surgery were recruited during pre-hospitalization at Sant’Andrea Hospital. All pparticipants completed measures of positivity, and physical and mental health (SF-36). Patients born with ARM completed also a faecal incontinence measure. Data were analyzed by means of structural equation modeling. Results: Study 1 included 66 adult patients born with ARM. The hypothesized model exhibited good fit. Positivity significantly influences Mental (β=.49, p<.01) and Physical health (β=.32, p<.01). The indirect effect of fecal continence on health was significant for the Mental component (β=.186, p<.05). Study 2 included 54 patients who underwent thoracic surgery. The hypothesized model exhibited good fit. Positivity assessed after surgery was positively associated with physical and mental health after 1-month (β=.21, p<.05). Conclusions: Positivity contributes in explaining the effects of functional impairments on quality of life and in predicting physical and mental health after surger

Low self-awareness of individuals with severe traumatic brain injury can lead to reduced ability to take another person's perspective

Aims of this study were (i) to verify whether a deficit or a lack of self-awareness can lead to difficulties in assuming another person's perspective after a severe traumatic brain injury (TBI); (ii) to verify whether perspective-taking deficits emerge more from performance-based tasks than self-reports; and (iii) to evaluate the possible relationships between perspective-taking difficulties and some clinical, neuropsychological, neuropsychiatric, and neuroimaging variables. The Interpersonal Reactivity Index, Empathy Quotient, first-order false-belief, and faux pas written stories were administered to 28 patients with severe TBI and 28 healthy controls. The Awareness Questionnaire was also administered to TBI patients and their caregivers. Patients were split into 2 groups (impaired self-awareness vs adequate self-awareness) on the basis of the discrepancy Awareness Questionnaire score. Both TBI groups obtained lower scores than healthy controls on the Fantasy subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, the reality question of the false-belief stories, and the memory questions of the faux pas test. Only impaired self-awareness patients tended to obtain lower scores in first-order false-belief detection. Impaired self-awareness patients also performed significantly worse than both healthy controls and adequate self-awareness patients on the faux pas tasks. The analysis suggests a causal relationship between low self-awareness and perspective-taking difficulties in this population of patients. Copyright \ua9 2014 Wolters Kluwer Health

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Health Care Is Negatively Associated With Psychosocial Well-Being in an Italian Cohort of People Living With HIV

NO ABSTRACT- LETTER TO THE EDITO

Characteristics of mental health interventions in a cohort of Italian PLWH over the last five years: impact of HIV disease and outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic

Evidence accumulated during past years confirm that people living with HIV (PLWH) still have to deal with comorbidities and chronic complications that can increase physical and psychological issues and can affect daily functioning, quality of life and mental health. Moreover, during the COVID-19 pandemic PLWH proved to be a population at increased risk of psychological distress. We explored the ongoing issues and the characteristics of the mental health interventions for which a cohort of Italian PLWH interacted with a psychologist over the past five years. We analysed a dataset that included 61 PLWH who underwent a psychological intervention between 2018 and 2022. We compared different frequencies in characteristics of mental health interventions according to different demographic and clinical variables, psychopathological symptoms and time of the request for intervention. We showed that psychopathological symptoms most frequently reported by patients were anxiety (55.7%), and depression (49.2%). Furthermore, we reported that most our patients undertook occasional psychological support meetings (31%), sought an intervention after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic (62.3%) and complained about disclosure issues (48.5%). Disclosure issues were mainly reported by younger PLWH (p = 0.002) with a shorter disease (p = 0.031) and treatment history (p = 0.032), and higher interpersonal sensitivity (p = 0.042). It seems fundamental to integrate psychological interventions into the care of PLWH, to give particular attention to PLWH with risky demographic, clinical and mental health factors and to pay special attention to emergency conditions (such as the COVID-19 pandemic) and the most widespread issues to create ad hoc interventions

HIV-Related Internalized Stigma and Patient Health Engagement Model in an Italian Cohort of People Living With HIV

The care engagement of people living with HIV (PLWH) measured with the patient health engagement (PHE) model and its association with HIV-related internalized stigma are not well established. Indeed, currently there are no data yet about the engagement of PLWH measured with the PHE model. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of HIV-related internalized stigma on care engagement and mental health and to fill the lack of data on PHE model applied to PLWH. We found that the internalized stigma score was significantly higher for PLWH (n=82) in worse care engagement phase and both higher internalized stigma scores and worse engagement were associated to major depression symptoms.In conclusion, our findings describe for the first time the engagement in care of PLWH measured with PHE and highlight the importance of PLWH support to find strategies to cope stigma-related stress and optimize their care engagement

POSITIVITY AND ITS ASSOCIATION WITH QUALITY OF LIFE OUTCOMES AND HEALTH BEHAVIORS. Proceedings XX NATIONAL CONGRESS ITALIAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION CLINICAL AND DYNAMIC SECTION URBINO - 7/9 SEPTEMBER 2018 Abstracts

Introduction: Positive Orientation is a general tendency to react to life experiences in a positive way, a rather pervasive way of looking at and facing reality, framing events, interpreting and evaluating oneself and subjective, personal and interpersonal experience, past and future (Caprara, 2009). It is not just a good indicator of the optimal functioning of the individual but promotes such adaptation. In fact, several results show that people with higher scores on this scale experience greater positive affections, are less prone to negative emotions, perceive their social ties in a more optimistic way, enjoy better health, have positive interpersonal relations (Alessandri et al., 2012). Aim: The purpose of this contribute will be to examine the role of positivity in predicting health outcomes and health behaviors samples with diverse conditions. Method: The role of positivity in predicting functioning impairment, length of hospitalization, physical and mental health and health behaviors will be examined considering different cross sectional and longitudinal samples of patients with diverse forms of cancer, patients who underwent a surgery of lobectomy or atypical pulmonary resection, and pregnant women. Results and Conclusion: patients who are high in positivity may afford better their physical impairments or conditions. Further studies are needed in order to understand the pathways of this association

The role of cardiovascular imaging to understand the different patterns of post-ischemic remodeling

Introduction: Cardiac remodeling is a relevant and unfavorable evolution of myocardial infarction, associated with increased risk of progression to overt HF. So far it is now recognized as a fundamental therapeutic target that clinicians must address from the acute event to the whole patient clinical follow-up. Cardiac Imaging is a fundamental tool for an accurate evaluation of cardiac morphology and function, and, thanks to the most recent advances in technology, clinicians are able to achieve useful predictive parameters of progressive remodeling and stratify the risk of adverse events. Since the first pioneer studies, there is actually a large amount of relevant data from the existing literature. Objectives: The present review mainly focuses on general concepts of pathophysiology and analyzes the role of past and new cardiovascular imaging parameters in predicting adverse post-ischemic remodeling phenotype

Difference in the neurocognitive functions of WLWH and MLWH in an Italian cohort of people living with HIV

Based on the available literature, women living with HIV (WLWH) seem to show greater cognitive and emotional disadvantages than men living with HIV (MLWH). Our aim was to compare the cognitive performance of MLWH and WLWH in an Italian cohort of People Living With HIV (PLWH) and to analyse factors potentially contributing to sex differences in cognitive function. We ran a retrospective, cross-sectional analysis of a monocentric dataset of PLWH who were administered a standardized neuropsychological test battery (SNB) during routine clinical care. We enrolled 161 Italian PLWH who are on combined antiretroviral therapy (cART): 114 (70.8%) MLWH and 47 (29.2%) WLWH. Global cognitive performance (composite z score) (GCP) was significantly higher in MLWH than WLWH [mean 0.19 (SD 0.85) vs − 0.13 (SD 0.96); p = 0.039]. Moreover, WLWH obtained significantly higher scores on the Zung Depression Scale than MLWH [mean 41.8 (SD 10.9) vs 36.7 (SD 9.2); p = 0.003]. However, there was no statistically significant direct effect between male sex and better GCP (p = 0.692) in the context of a mediation model. On the contrary, the associations between male sex and better GCP were mediated by higher level of education (a*b = + 0.15, Bootstrap CI95 = 0.05 and 0.27) and a lower Zung depression score (a*b = + 0.10, Bootstrap CI95 = 0.02 and 0.21). In conclusion, the global cognitive performance of WLWH is lower than that of MLWH. However, other demographic and clinical factors besides sex might help explain differences in their neurocognitive functions and make it possible for us to monitor them and identify those patients most in need