Background: The COVID-19 pandemic represents one of the most stressful events of recent times. Among the population, healthcare professionals who treat COVID-19 patients are most likely to develop psychological distress and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). The present study thus aimed to investigate the psychological impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on Italian healthcare workers. Methods: The responses of 145 healthcare workers (72 medical doctors and 73 nurses) were included in the final dataset. Participants were asked to provide sociodemographic and clinical information, and to complete: (a) quality of life and health-related Visual Analogue Scales, (b) State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Form Y1, (c) Beck Depression Inventory, and (d) PTSD Checklist for DSM-5. Results: A comparison between healthcare professionals working in COVID-19 wards and other units revealed that the former reported higher levels of both depressive symptoms and PTSS. Moreover, the results of regression analyses showed that in healthcare professionals working with COVID-19 patients, gender and marital status, and gender and age significantly predicted depressive symptoms and PTSS, respectively. Particularly, being female and not in a relationship were found to be associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms, whereas being female and older were found to be related to higher levels of PTSS. Conclusions: The current findings suggest that specific predisposing factors could identify healthcare workers who are at high risk of developing mental health symptoms when faced with COVID-19 patients.

The disease caused by respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) called COVID-19 resulted in a pandemic that has demanded extraordinary physical and mental effort from healthcare workers. This review provides an overview of studies that have explored traumatic stress in healthcare workers and associated factors between January and May 2020. The focus is on the most relevant literature investigating the prevalence of traumaand stressor-related symptoms. Articles were selected from PubMed and PsycINFO databases using the search terms, "healthcare workers," "COVID-19," and "posttraumatic stress" in different combinations and with various synonyms. Among the seven studies that fulfilled our criteria, five assessed traumatic stress response, one assessed acute stress symptoms, and one focused on vicarious traumatization. Overall, the available findings highlight the presence of trauma-related stress, with a prevalence ranging from 7.4 to 35%, particularly among women, nurses, frontline workers, and in workers who experienced physical symptoms. Future studies should clarify the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of healthcare workers, with particular focus on posttraumatic stress disorder.

BackgroundFibromyalgia (FM) is a syndrome primarily characterised by chronic, widespread musculoskeletal pain. In the aetiology of this syndrome a crucial role is played by complex interactions among biological, genetic, psychological, and socio-cultural factors. Recently, researchers have started to explore emotional functioning in FM, with their attention focused on alexithymia, a personality construct that affects the regulation of a person’s own emotions. On the other hand, the detection and experience of emotional signals from other people have only been sparsely investigated in FM syndrome and no studies have investigated the ability to represent other people’s mental states (i.e. Theory of Mind, ToM) in these patients. Here we present the first study investigating a large set of social-cognitive abilities, and the possible relationships between these abilities and the performance on executive-function tasks, in a homogenous sample of patients with FM.MethodologyForty women with FM and forty-one healthy women matched for education and age were involved in the study. Social cognition was assessed with a set of validated experimental tasks. Measures of executive function were used to test the correlations between this dimension and the social-cognitive profile of patients with FM. Relationships between social-cognitive abilities and demographic, clinical and psychological variables were also investigated.Principal FindingsPatients with FM have impairments both in the regulation of their own affect and in the recognition of other’s emotions, as well as in representing other people’s mental states. No significant correlations were found between social cognition tasks and the subcomponents of the executive function that were analysed.ConclusionsThe results show the presence of several impairments in social cognition skills in patients with FM, which are largely independent of both executive function deficits and symptoms of psychological distress. The impairments reported highlight the importance of adequately assessing ToM and emotional functioning in clinical practice.

This study examined the relationships between posttraumatic growth (PTG) and posttraumatic depreciation (PTD) across 10 countries and assessed the factorial invariance of the standardized inventory assessing PTG and PTD, the PTGDI-X, the expansion of the PTGI-X (Tedeschi et al., 2017). We also investigated the roles of social and cognitive factors in PTG and PTD. Data were collected from participants who identified that their most stressful life experience met the definition of trauma in Australia,

This a preprint and has not been peer reviewed. Data may be preliminary.