Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is causing major social changes to which significant psychological effects are linked. During the first phase of the pandemic wave in Italy, whilst there was insufficient information about the phenomenon and the strategies to safeguard the population against it, many categories of people, whose professions required constant contact with the public, were affected by the contagion.Aims: The literature has shown how religiousness can support the management of stress due to diseases and health risks. In relation to this, the current study wanted to investigate how priests managed the early stages of the pandemic. This work, therefore, aimed to investigate the psychological experiences related to the contagion and the eventual death of colleagues as well as the resilience strategies activated by the priests during the process.Participants: The research involved 12 Catholic priests, all male and aged between 42 and 63 years. They came from the same pastoral community in one of the regions in Northern Italy that were most affected during the first phase of the pandemic. Those ministers had been constantly in contact with the faithful of their parishes since the breakout of the virus.Methodology: A qualitative research design was adopted, and in-depth interviews were conducted. The dialogues aimed at investigating the deep, personal and relational experiences of the priests, together with their concerns and the tools they adopted to manage anxiety. The texts obtained from the interviews were subjected to thematic analysis.Results: The areas studied concerned the experiences of the participants during the lockdown, the implications of social distancing and lack of funeral rituality and, finally, the importance of prayer as a resilience factor.Conclusions: In the current scenario dominated by the pandemic, it is significant and stimulating to understand and reflect on the functions and roles of the experiences of faith, particularly the act of elaborating the process of mourning due to COVID-19.

Background Worldwide, veterinary practitioners and students are reported to be at higher risk of suicide, burnout, and depression compared to other occupational groups. The aim of the current study was to apply text mining and topic modelling analysis on scientific literature regarding suicide, burnout, and depression among veterinary practitioners and students to extract meaningful and synthetic information. These statistical approaches can be used to comprehend more in deep the phenomena involving veterinarians and veterinary students and to suggest the potential changes needed in admission to veterinary school, veterinary curricula, and post-graduation initiatives as preventive actions. Results A systematic search protocol was set up to identify scientific literature that published on the topic from 1985 to 2019. Two-hundred-eleven records were selected with abstracts/texts submitted to text mining and topic modelling analysis. Student, stress, work, anim*, and euthanasia resulted the most frequent terms. Topics modelling allowed to differentiate groups of words and papers in 3 areas of interest: 1) students’ difficulties encountered during their studies that increase stress and anxiety impairing their psychological health; 2) exposure to death and euthanasia as risk factor for mental health; and 3) need of support among those providing medical and health care, and of supportive group work to cope with such profession. Conclusion Based on the most frequent words included in the clouds and on the contents of the papers clusterised in them, some suggestions are interfered. It is emphasized that the veterinary curricula should include courses that prepare them early to deal with animal death and post-death grief of pet owners, to handle ethical dilemmas and moral stressors, to communicate with clients and staff members, to work in team, to balance work-family life and to promote individual and team resources. Specific courses for veterinary practitioners could keep them updated on their new roles and ways to handle them among functioning as potential feedbacks to monitor their psychological wellbeing.

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The concept of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) refers to a variety of processes in which emotion regulation occurs as part of live social interactions and includes, among others, also those interpersonal interactions in which individuals turn to others to be helped or to help the others in managing emotions. Although IER may be a concept of interest in group therapy, specific theoretical insights in this field appear to be missed. In this article, we firstly provide a review of IER definitions, of classifications of IER strategies, and of IER clinical conceptualizations. Afterwards, we discuss the relevance of considering IER for group therapy, both in terms of non-specific group therapeutic factors and of group therapy techniques promoting adaptive emotion regulation, underlining the potentially relevant role of IER behaviors as intrinsically involved in group experience.

This study aimed to investigate the association between narcissism and two forms of heavy work investment, namely, workaholism and work engagement. More specifically, it was hypothesized that narcissism is positively associated with both workaholism and work engagement, with workload moderating these relationships, which are expected to be stronger when the workload is high. Overall, 217 workers completed a self-report questionnaire, and the hypothesized relationships were tested using moderated multiple regression. Results partially supported our predictions. Narcissism was positively associated with workaholism and its dimensions of working excessively and working compulsively only in individuals facing a high workload. Furthermore, narcissism was positively associated with work engagement and its dimensions of vigor and dedication (but no absorption) in employees with average levels of workload. Finally, the workload exacerbated the relationship between narcissism and work engagement and its dimensions so that these associations were stronger when the workload was high. Overall, our study suggested that in a work environment characterized by moderate levels of demand, individuals with strong narcissistic components might inherently feel energetic and dedicated (i.e., engaged) at work. Differently, in a demanding work environment, workers with high narcissism might experience higher work engagement, but they could also be at risk of workaholism.

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a state of health emergency affecting the entire world population. Given the serious practical and psychological difficulties and complications that have been experienced during this period, many scholars have created hypothesis, as a consequence, an increased possibility of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) within the general population with significant implications for one’s dream activity. Participants in the study were recruited via the instant messaging application ‘WhatsApp’ for a period of 14 days. The study consisted of three phases: the first phase provided information on the purpose of the research and how to carry it out; in the second phase, each participant, using the Bionian model of dream experience as a focus, was asked to write down dreams, emotions and free connections/associations related to the dream. At the end of the collection, the texts obtained were analysed by means of a qualitative analysis performed with the aid of the MAXQDA software. The study confirms the computational and exploratory analysis of the text carried out in the research of Pesonen et al. (2020), finding also in our sample the presence of the hypothesized clusters going to explain the manifestation of imagery related to COVID-19 also within the dream activity. To confirm this, the nightmare of participant number 6 of the study is reported. The following qualitative research has offered an insight into the traumatic nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, showing how many unmetabolized ‘daytime elements’ have been reproposed in the dream scenario, recalling the symptomatology of PTSD through the presence of distressing content that affect the quality of sleep and the daily life of the individual.

Abstract. In all group therapeutic processes, there are interacting and interdependent mechanisms and changing conditions: the therapeutic factors (Corsini & Rosenberg, 1955;Yalom, 1995). These factors are intrinsic to the therapeutic process and unrelated to the type of group (Rorhbaugh & Bartels, 1975). The present study examines the factor structure of the questionnaire Factors Aspecific and Specific in the Group Therapy (FAT.A.S.-G.; Marogna, 2009), designed to investigate specific and non-specific therapeutic factors. The questionnaire was administered to 167 patients involved in a shortterm psychotherapy group. The factor analysis identified two main dimensions: interdependence and the group as Object-Self. The Cronbach Alpha coefficients range from .88 to .93, showing high internal consistency between items.

Research on heart disease have found a strong and consistent evidence of association between some psychosocial risk factors, including depression, anxiety, self-efficacy, lack of social support and outcome of disease. Depression increases the risk of cardiac death and is highly predictive of reduced adherence to recommended treatments; anxiety appears to be linked to adverse cardiac outcomes. It was demonstrated that Cardiac Rehabilitation (CR) leads to substantial improvements and positive outcomes because combines the prescription of physical activity with the modification of risk factors and aims to reduce symptoms related to the disease and the risk of new cardiovascular events. The main objective of this study is to determine if a short and intense CR program can produce a positive impact on anxious and depressive symptoms revealed in cardiac patients, confirming results of previous researches. The protocol was proposed to all patients referred for an outpatient CR after an acute event who attended the short 2-week intensive rehabilitation program. A total of 157 patients recruited at the operating unit of Cardiology, in the Hospital of Cittadella (Italy), was included in the analysis. The Beck Depression Inventory-II and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Y were administered to the patients. SPSS 17.0 was used for statistical analysis. T-tests for paired samples were used to evaluate differences between the beginning and the end of the CR program. There was a statistically significant difference between the beginning and the end of the CR program. Results for paired samples showed significant differences in all factors of the BDI-II and in the total score. In addition, a statistically significant difference was found even in the state - anxiety subscale. No significant difference was detected for the trait anxiety. According to recent studies, this research shows that the CR program has a significant impact on levels of anxiety and depression, because all activities focus their commitment on changing the patient's personal beliefs and perception of illness, promoting the exchange of information and sharing of concerns and fears, increasing the patient's resilience with the aim of enabling him/her to reorganize positively his/her personal, family and professional sphere.