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Depression is an independent risk factor of poor outcomes for Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) patients. Perceived social support and alexithymia are psychosocial variables identified by previous studies as predictive of depression in normal controls and CKD patients. Repetitively thinking and socially sharing emotional experiences have been investigated in association with depression in normal populations. Our cross-sectional study aimed to assess the effects of perceived social support, alexithymia, mental rumination, and social sharing on depression in CKD patients and controls. 103 CKD patients (age = 61.9 ± 7.2, 54 men) and 101 controls (age = 64.51 ± 6.56; 47 men) completed a questionnaire of 5 sections: Pluridimensional Inventory for Haemodialysis Patients (IPPE), Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), Toronto Alexihymia Scale (TAS-20), Social Sharing and Mental Rumination. Multiple regression analysis models with dummy variables assessed the effects of IPPE, MSPSS, TAS-20, Social Sharing, and Mental Rumination on GDS across the subgroups of participants. SPSS software was used. Depression levels resulted higher for patients than controls, especially in patients dialyzed for less than 4 years. The effects of perceived social support and alexithymia differed with respect to the subsamples. Rumination was positively associated with depression in normal controls, but negatively related with depression in patients dialyzed for 4+ years. The study confirmed high levels of depression in CKD patients. Depression was influenced by perceived social support, alexithymia, and the cognitive elaboration of emotional troubles associated with the disease. Rumination appeared as a dysfunctional consequence of emotions for normal controls, but had an adaptive function for patients dialyzed for 4+ years.

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In light of the increasing propensity toward unsportsmanlike behaviours that have caused the failure of the notion of fair play, this research tested a causal model of theoretically-predicted antecedents of sportspersonship, in which the two trait-related personality factors, self-control and aggressiveness, mediated the relationship between motivational orientations and sportspersonship. After examining the five-factor structure of the Multidimensional Sportspersonship Orientation Scale in a first sample of Italian athletes (n = 371, Mage = 26.57), the resulting 20-item four-factor model proved to be satisfactory and reliable. In a second sample (n = 814, Mage = 25.96) the proposed empirically-based model confirmed the important role played by self-control in mediating the relationship between ego orientation, aggressiveness, and sportspersonship. In terms of practical implications, the findings provide a more comprehensive conceptualization of the factors that differentiate the inter-and intra-individual characteristics in sportspersonship, thus allowing practitioners to develop effective intervention programs addressed to athletes. of the MSOS and the proposed causal model. Besides this, the cross-sectional nature of the study does not allow for inferring causal relationships between the variables.Further studies could examine the conceptual meta-theory of the "I cube" model (Slotter and Finkel, 2011) by analysing the interaction between its three processes of instigation, inhibition, and impellance, in order to better understand the problem of unsportsmanlike behaviours at competitive levels.