La pandemia da Covid-19, un potenziale trauma collettivo

Le trasformazioni relazionali e sociali che la pandemia ha imposto hanno spinto la ricerca psicologica ad esplorare la sua potenzialità traumatica. L’aumento del disagio psichico e la crescita esponenziale di problematiche internalizzanti e stress-correlate in target a rischio come quello dei giovani, spinge oggi a parlare di una vera e propria emergenza psicologica giovanile. A partire dall’integrazione di alcune tra le prospettive che hanno contribuito a costruire una psicologia del trauma collettivo, il presente lavoro si propone di approfondire alcuni aspetti che hanno inciso sulla traumaticità dell’esperienza pandemica. L’ipotesi che la pandemia, come ogni trauma collettivo, funga da lente di ingrandimento sul presente ha guidato l’approfondimento della sua relazione con le forme del malessere contemporaneo. Nei giovani, l’assenza di un adeguato bagaglio di esperienze e di strumenti necessari per affrontare e significare quest’esperienza sembra collegata anche a specifiche caratteristiche della società di Narciso in cui sono nati. La cultura dell’illimitato, del controllo e della prestazione potrebbero aver funzionato come fattori di fragilizzazione psichica. Lo strumento della narrazione testimoniale nel dispositivo gruppale potrebbe orientare la costruzione di progetti di intervento che mirino al superamento del vuoto rappresentazionale cui il trauma pandemico confronta. Al contempo, il supporto allo sforzo di comprensione e di intelligibilità di questo trauma potrebbe sostenere il processo di ri-costruzione di una memoria collettiva condivisibile. The relational and social changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic have urged psychology to explore its traumatic potential. Moreover, the increase of psychic distress as well as internalising and stress-related problems in young adults is to be defined as a real psychological emergency. The present study examines several aspects of the traumatic experience of the pandemic starting from a critical discussion of some scholarly work contributing to the development of collective trauma psychology. The hypothesis according to which the pandemic, as all collective traumas, gives insights into the present has prompted to shed new light on its relationship with the different forms of contemporary malaise. Young adults' lack of experience and tools to cope with and give meaning to such an event is likely to be connected also to several specific characteristics of the Narcissus society in which they were born. Limitless, control and performance cultures may have functioned as drivers of psychic fragility. Testimonial narratives in group settings could be tools in the development of intervention programmes aiming not only at overcoming the representational vacuum caused by the traumatic pandemic event but also at re-constructing a shared collective memory around this trauma

La testimonianza del vissuto pandemico. Una ricerca con giovani adulti

Ricerca di impostazione ricostruttivo-testimoniale sul vissuto pandemico in giovani adult

Critical fluctuations and anomalous transport in soft Yukawa-Langevin systems

Simulation of a Langevin-dynamics model demonstrates emergence of critical fluctuations and anomalous grain transport which have been observed in experiments on "soft" quasi-two-dimensional dusty plasma clusters. It has been suggested that these anomalies derive from particular non-equilibrium physics, but our model does not contain such physics: the grains are confined by an external potential, interact via static Yukawa forces, and are subject to stochastic heating and dissipation from neutrals. One remarkable feature is emergence of leptokurtic probability distributions of grain displacements $\xi(\tau)$ on time-scales $\tau<\tau_{\Delta}$, where $\tau_{\Delta}$ is the time at which the standard deviation $\sigma(\tau)\equiv ^{1/2}$ approaches the mean inter-grain distance $\Delta$. Others are development of humps in the distributions on multiples of $\Delta$, anomalous Hurst exponents, and transitions from leptokurtic towards Gaussian displacement distributions on time scales $\tau>\tau_{\Delta}$. The latter is a signature of intermittency, here interpreted as a transition from bursty transport associated with hopping on intermediate time scales to vortical flows on longer time scales.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure

To what extent can dynamical models describe statistical features of turbulent flows?

Statistical features of "bursty" behaviour in charged and neutral fluid turbulence, are compared to statistics of intermittent events in a GOY shell model, and avalanches in different models of Self Organized Criticality (SOC). It is found that inter-burst times show a power law distribution for turbulent samples and for the shell model, a property which is shared only in a particular case of the running sandpile model. The breakdown of self-similarity generated by isolated events observed in the turbulent samples, is well reproduced by the shell model, while it is absent in all SOC models considered. On this base, we conclude that SOC models are not adequate to mimic fluid turbulence, while the GOY shell model constitutes a better candidate to describe the gross features of turbulence.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, in press on Europhys. Lett. (may 2002

Lockdown Young Adult Concerns Scale (LYACS): The Development and Validation Process

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic as well as the social, relational, and economic transformations of the lockdown had a strong traumatic impact on the mental health of the word population, even more so on specific targets such as young adults. The spread of what was an unknown virus and the lockdown experience have raised concerns for the preservation of people’s physical and mental health and their private, relational, and work life. Objectives: The current study presents the construction, development, and validation process of the Lockdown Young Adult Concerns Scale (LYACS), an instrument assessing the level of two principal concerns during the pandemic lockdown, i.e., Loss of Life Control (CLLC) and Infection/Contagion (CIF). Methods: After a pilot study that defined the dimensions, selected the items, and carried out Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) on a sample of 100 subjects (M = 24; DS = 3.9), a new sample of 259 Italian young adults (ages 18-35 yrs.; M = 24; SD = 3.8) was used to assess the psychometric validity of LYACS through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), reliability, convergent and divergent validity. Further descriptive analyses of the final version of scale as well as Two-way Analyses of Variance (ANOVA) on selected sociodemographic variables were conducted. Results: The outcome of Confirmatory Factor Analysis, which resulted in high goodness of fit (χ2/df = 2.0; GFI = .98; TLI = .98; RMSEA = .06; SRMR = .04), supports two identifiable factors reflecting the theoretically-based constructs of LYACS, thus supporting the EFA results. Furthermore, internal consistency as well as convergent and divergent validity analyses allow the scale to be considered a reliable and valid instrument for the present investigation. Finally, variance analysis shows that there are significant differences among the factor levels regarding gender, occupation, perception of the home space during lockdown, and having/not having worked on Concern about Loss of Life Control (CLLC), and between gender and confinement cohabitation on Concern about Infection/Contagion (CIF). Conclusion: Overall, the reported results show good psychometric proprieties for the scale and shed new light on how Italian young adults lived the COVID-19 pandemic

Mechanical and metallurgical properties of dissimilar metal joints using novel joining techniques

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

L’aporie dans la rencontre entre témoignage et écoute de l’expérience-limite

À l’aide de l’écriture concentrationnaire, on propose de creuser la rencontre entre témoignage et écoute de la césure historique et psychique nommée Shoah. L’effort multidisciplinaire de la pensée que cette césure a engendré montre qu’elle entraine forcement avec soi un reste non symbolisable, au niveau individuel et collectif, voire une connotation aporétique qui est la marque propre de l’expérience-limite, de son témoignage, de son écoute et de leur rencontre. Faire face à cette dimension aporétique constitue un impératif éthique pour l’individu et la communauté, mais aussi une voie de survivance. En considérant la Shoah comme une loupe sur l’humain, sur ses potentialités mortifères et ses capacités de résistance en condition extrêmes, elle devient une source inépuisable et indispensable de Kulturarbeit qui échappe aux risques commémoratifs d’un passé loin et nous aide à mieux comprendre et gérer notre contemporain

The Covid-19 pandemic experience in young adults: preliminary results from the YAPEQ (Young Adults Pandemic Experience Questionnaire)

Young adults have long been considered a high-risk target in the development of psychological distress due to the relational and social transformations that the COVID-19 pandemic caused. "e present study investigates the ways in which young adults (N=259) lived the pandemic in its multiple phases through the administration of a self-report measurement tool (YAPEQ) developed from the results of an exploratory preliminary study. "e YAPEQ is composed of 24 Likert scales validated through internal consistency and exploratory factor analysis. Our results show the prevalence of negative emotions during lockdown (M=3.50; DS=.92) and the second wave (M=3.32; DS=.96), loss of life control (M=3.46; DS=.87), fear of ge!ing infected and of infecting others (M=3.64; DS=.87), infodemic during lockdown (M=3.50; DS=.72) and the second wave (M=3.36; DS=.78) as well as low levels of life satisfaction (M=18.4; DS=6.81) and dispositional optimism (M=17.5; DS=4.91). In addition, our $ndings shed light on a high sense of responsibility as well as a strong preference for coevals (M=3.19; DS=.85) as compared to adults (M=2.16; DS=.88). Correlational analysis predicted two regression models which emphasised the traumatogenicity of the pandemic during lockdown (R2=.39) and the second wave (R2=.56)

The Covid-19 pandemic experience in young adults: preliminary results from the YAPEQ (Young Adults Pandemic Experience Questionnaire)

Young adults have long been considered a high-risk target in the development of psychological distress due to the relational and social transformations that the COVID-19 pandemic caused. The present study investigates the ways in which young adults (N=259) lived the pandemic in its multiple phases through the administration of a self-report measurement tool (YAPEQ) developed from the results of an exploratory preliminary study. The YAPEQ is composed of 24 Likert scales validated through internal consistency and exploratory factor analysis

The role of worries on young adults’ mental health and future representation

According to recent developments in the literature, young adults are affected by a decline in the quality of mental health as a consequence of the pandemic trauma. Hence, the constant exposure to potentially traumatic collective events, such as the war in Europe and the climate crisis could play a role in young adults’ ability to be projected in a positive vision of the future and, more generally, on the quality of their psychological well-being. The present study aims to delve into the role of collective and personal worries on future vision and mental health. In doing so, data from 310 young Italian adults (49% male and 51% female, ages 18-30 years, M=21.9, SD=2.6) have been collected via a web-based survey including the following scales: The Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ), the Worry Domains Scale (WDQ), the Climate Change Worry Scale (CCWS), the Fear of War Scale (FOWARS), the Dark Future Scale (DFS) and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21). The descriptive results show a moderate level of pathological worry (M=44.4; SD=8.8) and the predominance of worries related to Lack of Confidence (M=10.4; SD=5.2), Aimless Future (M=11.6; SD=5.1) and Work (M=10.2; SD=4.7). In addition, they show slightly above average levels of worry with respect to climate change (M=3.1; SD=.9) and fear of war (M=3.2; SD=.9) as well as extremely severe to moderate levels of Anxiety (M=17.7; SD=10.9), Depression (M=20.8; SD=10.8) and Stress (M=25.6; SD=10.0). Results from ANOVA show that women reported significantly higher scores than men of Anxiety, Depression, Stress, pathological worry and future anxiety. Several hierarchical multiple regression models were run in order to explore the role of worries on the representation of future anxiety (R2=.59; p < .001), stress (R2=.44; p < .001), anxiety (R2=.42; p < .001) and depression (R2=.45; p < .001). The results show that the conceptualization of worry, intended as both pathological and non-pathological, individual and collective, has a strong impact on young adults’ mental health and future representation. The results also highlight the importance of worry as a variable worth investigating in psychological research and interventions aiming at improving youth well-being