Yoga for Anxiety Management in the Workplace

Anxiety is a potential cause of serious influence in a person\u27s daily life. This chapter is focused specifically on the effects of the work environment factors in disease development and progression. Working environments are places of significant sources of stress: they put us in connection with our duties and expectations (often not coincide with reality) and with a "forced socialization." Especially forced socialization is to be considered a main source of stress in work places, inducing negative outcomes in work and social relationships. The psychosocial risks of work places can so be defined according to design, organization and management of work as well as to social and environmental contexts that may lead to damage of physical, social and psychological domains. Stress can then be defined as a pattern of emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological reactions to adverse and noxious aspects perceived as the contents of the working environment. Thanks to the beginning of psychosocial research on the working environment, the impact of some aspects of the work environment on health has become an object of study, as the interventions to mitigate it. Yoga, meditation, and mantra techniques, as described in this work (presenting others’ experiences and two of own current projects, used in a hospital workplace to control the condition of occupational stress but also in a clinical sample), showed the potential in considerably reducing anxiety and mood symptoms

Method and system for enabling real-time speckle processing using hardware platforms

An accelerator for the speckle atmospheric compensation algorithm may enable real-time speckle processing of video feeds that may enable the speckle algorithm to be applied in numerous real-time applications. The accelerator may be implemented in various forms, including hardware, software, and/or machine-readable media

Psychiatric hospitalization rates in italy before and during covid-19: Did they change? an analysis of register data

ObjectivesTo assess admission rates to 7 General Hospital Psychiatric Wards (GHPWs) located in the Lombardy Region in the 40 days after the start of COVID-19 epidemic, compared to similar periods of 2020 and 2019.MethodsAnonymized data from the regional psychiatric care register have been obtained and analyzed. The seven GHPWs care for approximately 1.4 million inhabitants and have a total of 119 beds.ResultsIn the 40-day period (February 21st-March 31st 2020) after the start of the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy, compared to a similar 40-day period prior to 21 February, and compared to two 40-day periods of 2019, there has been a marked reduction in psychiatric admission rates. The reduction was explained by voluntary admissions, while there was not a noticeable reduction for involuntary admissions. The reduction was visible for all diagnostic groups, except for a group of 'Other' diagnoses, which includes anxiety disorders, neurocognitive disorders, etc.ConclusionsLarge-scale pandemics can modify voluntary admission rates to psychiatric facilities in the early phases following pandemic onset. We suggest that the reduction in admission rates may be due to fear of hospitals, seen as possible sites of contagion, as well as to a change in thresholds of behavioural problems acting as a trigger for admission requests from family relatives or referrals from treating clinicians. It is unclear from the study whether the reduction in admissions was contributed to most by the current pandemic or the lockdown imposed due to the pandemic.

Modeling

and simulation of nanoscale devices with a desktop supercompute

The MIF-173G/C polymorphism does not contribute to prednisone poor response in vivo in childhoood acute lymphoblastic leucemia

Treatment results of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) have greatly improved over the last decades. Identification of patients at higher risk of treatment failure remains one major target of current clinical research in this field. In the last decade the Associazione Italiana di Ematologia ed Oncologia Pediatrica (AIEOP)1 and the Berlin–Frankfurt–Münster (BFM) study groups have emphasized the role of corticosteroid sensitivity of leukemic blasts at the time of diagnosis, a risk feature first described and subsequently assessed by the BFM group.2 Patients with 1000 blast cells per l of peripheral blood after 7 days of prednisone monotherapy and one injection of intrathecal methotrexate (IT-MTX) were considered to have a poor response to prednisone (PPR) and no more than a 35% chance of becoming long-term disease-free survivors on standard therapeutic protocols.3 Recently their outcome has improved when more intensive chemotherapy has been applied

Mental health services and the city: a neighbourhood-level epidemiological study

Introduction Neighbourhood composition is considered a social determinant of mental health that can be addressed by policymakers to improve outcomes. Deprived neighbourhoods typically lack resources such as leisure and park facilities but also daycare centres. However, the study of specific needs and resource distribution tailored to the clinical-demographic features of mental health service users is still in its infancy. Aim In this study, we aimed to identify discrepancies between neighbourhood resources and epidemiological composition of a representative sample of mental health service users in the large metropolitan area of Milan in Italy. Methods In a cross-sectional study design, we described neighbourhood-specific density of community services and the socio-demographic and clinical features of residents who accessed local mental health services in the same geographical areas. Data were retrieved from municipal and mental health registries and analysed at a neighbourhood level and at a higher level of neighbourhood clustering based on territory coverage of three mental health departments. Results At the neighbourhood level, no significant difference could be observed between resources of the three identified urban areas. However, a strong heterogeneity of resource localization was observed for public housing properties, social services, juvenile community homes, social aggregation spaces and day centres for disabled individuals after controlling for population density across the three areas. This heterogeneity did not match the distribution of service users or specific diagnosis-related needs across different urban districts. Non-affective psychoses were found to be more frequently diagnosed in deprived neighbourhoods, whereas anxiety disorders were most frequent in an area which incorporates relatively more affluent neighbourhoods. Further studies including a neighbourhood-level socio-economic index are needed to confirm the likelihood of these associations. Conclusion Our preliminary findings suggest a heterogeneous distribution of diagnoses across city areas, which might reflect uneven neighbourhood resources. Overall, this study highlights the need to adequately tailor neighbourhood resources to the specific mental health needs of vulnerable individuals

Consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on admissions to general hospital psychiatric wards in Italy: Reduced psychiatric hospitalizations and increased suicidality

Aims: The present investigation aimed at evaluating differences in psychiatric hospitalizations in Italy during and after the lockdown due to the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), compared to the same periods in 2018 and 2019. Methods: We obtained and analyzed anonymized data on psychiatric admissions (n = 4550) from 12 general hospital psychiatric wards (GHPWs) in different Italian regions (catchment area = 3.71 millions of inhabitants). Using a mixed-effects Poisson regression model, we compared admission characteristics across three periods: (a) March 1\u2013June 30, 2018 and 2019; (b) March 1\u2013April 30, 2020 (i.e., lockdown); and (c) May 1\u2013June 30, 2020 (i.e., post-lockdown). Results: During the COVID-19 lockdown, there was a 41% reduction (IRR = 0.59; p 65 years) was observed in the lockdown (40%; IRR = 0.60; 95% CI: 0.44\u20130.82) and post-lockdown (28%; IRR = 0.72; 95% CI: 0.54\u20130.96) periods. Long-stay admissions (>14 days) increased (63%; IRR = 1.63; 95% CI: 1.32\u20132.02) during the lockdown and decreased by 39% thereafter (IRR = 0.61; 95% CI: 0.49\u20130.75). A significant 35% increase in patients reporting suicidal ideation was observed in the post-lockdown period, compared to the rate observed in the 2018 and 2019 control period (IRR = 1.35; 95% CI: 1.01\u20131.79). Conclusion: The COVID-19 lockdown was associated with changes in the number of psychiatric admissions, particularly for older patients and long-stay hospitalizations. Increased admission of patients reporting suicidal ideation in the post-lockdown period merits special attention. Further studies are required to gain insight into the observed phenomena