Un esercito di maestri disarmati per educare le periferie. Cura, responsabilità e riflessività come risorse: dal Progetto Chance al Progetto E-vai

Partendo da una ri-concettualizzazione della dispersione scolastica come fenomeno post-moderno da inserire negli approfondimenti circa il disagio della civiltà, si descrive il lavoro di Chance e di E-vai come lavoro psicopedagogico centrato su principi psicoanalitici e di psicologia culturale. Secondo questo punto di vista, il recupero e la prevenzione della dispersione si realizzano ripristinando o attivando funzioni di cura delle relazioni e di pensiero nei gruppi che, in strati successivi, dovrebbero contenere le giovani persone in crescita immerse in un’atmosfera di forte disagio psichico ed esistenziale, indotto da particolari condizioni ma ormai esteso fuori dai confini delle tradizionali zone di esclusione sociale. Tali funzioni riguardano in primo luogo gli operatori dell’educazione che, per potersi comportare da adulti responsabili, devono vincere il senso di isolamento ed impotenza indotto da una organizzazione istituzionale tendenzialmente caotica ed incerta sulla propria missione. Le metodologie adottate, centrate su gruppi in grado di contenere campi emozionali destabilizzanti, in linea di principio possono estendersi al contesto scolastico più generale in quanto i presupposti teorici lo consentono ed in quanto l’esperienza educativa viene condotta dentro la scuola ordinaria proprio per confrontarsi con la complessità delle organizzazioni reali piuttosto che con ambienti speciali o laboratori

Illness Attitudes, Mood, and Dreams During the Second Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic: An International Study

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has strongly impacted the world. Recent research on the pandemic has found a significant impact on sleep habits, dreaming, and psychological well-being. We investigated sociodemographic and COVID-19 related variables, attitudes toward illness (using the Illness Attitude Scale, or IAS), mood (using the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale, or DASS-21), and oneiric activity (using participant’s Most Recent Dream) during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in a sample of 620 Italian, Canadian and Mexican adult subjects (79.9% women; ages 18-73 years, M = 27, SD = 11.5). Results indicated that: a) participants presented problematic scores of worries about illness and health habits, as well as moderate levels of depression, anxiety, and stress; b) female participants reported higher levels of negative illness attitudes, as well as higher levels of depression, anxiety, and stress; c) participants knowing a person who had the COVID-19 disease reported higher levels of stress, while participants knowing a COVID-19-related death reported higher levels of negative illness attitudes and higher levels of anxiety; d) participants reporting negative emotional tone in their dreams also reported higher levels of depression, anxiety, and stress; finally, e) the most represented emotional dream tone was negative, the most represented emotions in participants’ dreams were anxiety and being scared, while the most represented actions were life or death situations. In sum, the findings of this study indicate that the COVID-19 lockdown measures, categorized as a catastrophic and traumatic event, significantly affected people’s oneiric imagery in the three countries, in relation to some differences related to specific public health policies and different socioeconomic conditions, and that an integrative experimental and clinical perspective, including qualitative and quantitative analysis, as well as different theoretical approaches, could contribute to a more comprehensive analysis of dreaming

Bioactive IL-18 expression is up-regulated in Crohn's disease

An imbalance of immunoregulatory factors is believed to contribute to uncontrolled mucosal Th1 cell activation in Crohn's disease (CD), IL-18, a macrophage-like cell-derived cytokine, is involved in Th1 clone development, and IFN-gamma production. Therefore, IL-18 expression was investigated in CD, Whole mucosal intestinal tissue and lamina propria mononuclear cells (LPMC) of 12 CD and 9 ulcerative colitis (UC) patients and 15 non-inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) controls were tested for IL-18 by semiquantitative RT-PCR and Western blot analysis, Transcripts for IL-18 were found in all samples tested. However, increased IL-18 mRNA accumulation was detected in both mucosal and LPMC samples from CD in comparison to UC and controls. In CD, transcripts for IL-18 were more abundant in the mucosal samples taken from involved areas, An 18-kDa band consistent with mature IL-18 was predominantly found in CD mucosal samples, In mucosal samples from non-IBD controls, IL-18 was present as a 24-kDa polypeptide, Consistently, active IL-1 beta-converting enzyme (ICE) subunit (p20) was expressed in samples from either CD or UC, whereas, in colonic mucosa from non-IBD controls, ICE was synthesized as precursor (p45) only, To confirm that IL-18 produced in CD tissue was functionally active, CD LPMC were treated with a specific IL-18 antisense oligonucleotide. In these cultures, IL-18 down-regulation was accompanied by a decrease in IFN-gamma expression, In aggregate, our data indicate that IL-18 up-regulation is a feature of CD and suggest that IL-18 may contribute to the local immunoinflammatory response in CD