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Background: Although necessary for public health, quarantine has been documented to cause post-traumatic stress symptoms, anxiety, and depression. We designed the present longitudinal study to evaluate the psychological impact of quarantine in Italian community-dwelling adult participants. Methods: A sample of 304 Italian community-dwelling adult participants (75.7% female; mean age = 35.28 years) was administered self-reported measures of depression, anxiety and acute stress symptoms at the beginning and at the end of the lockdown. Potential predictors of clinically relevant symptoms at the end of the lockdown were assessed. Specifically, data on gender, civil status, education level, occupation, and area of residence, as well as maladaptive personality domains were collected. Results: More than 43% of participants suffered from the early impact of the lockdown; at the end of the lockdown roughly 32% of participants still reported any clinically relevant depression anxiety, and/or acute stress disorder condition. Clinically relevant acute stress reaction at the beginning of lockdown was a particularly important risk factor for experiencing clinically relevant acute stress, depression, and anxiety at the end of the lockdown. Maladaptive personality domains represent non-trivial predictors of participants’ self-reports of clinically relevant depression, anxiety, and acute stress conditions at the end of the lockdown. Limitations: Excess of female participants and the impossibility of evaluating if participants suffered from any internalizing disorder before the COVID-19 quarantine represent major limitations of our study. Conclusions: Our findings suggest assessment of internalizing disorder symptoms during quarantine may be helpful in identifying people who may benefit from early treatment interventions.

To evaluate the usefulness of the DSM-5 maladaptive personality domains in explaining the similarities and differences among four disorders included in the obsessive–compulsive spectrum, 428 Italian community-dwelling women (mean age=31.96years, SD=12.30years) were administered the Obsessive–Compulsive Spectrum Disorder Scales and the Personality Inventory for DSM-5-Short Form as part of an ongoing online survey on women's health. Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes (MIMIC) confirmatory bifactor analysis results showed that the OCSD general factor (i.e., obsessive–compulsive spectrum factor) was positively associated with Negative Affectivity, whereas Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), Hoarding Disorder (HD), and Skin-Picking Disorder (SPD) specific factors showed significant and substantial differential relationships with dysfunctional personality domains. Specifically, BDD was positively associated with Negative Affectivity, Detachment and Psychoticism domains; HD was associated with high Negative Affectivity and Psychoticism; and SPD was associated with Detachment. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Background Extant literature indicates that Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) may be reliably assessed in adolescence. Sharp and colleagues’ (2011) suggested that mentalization could be an important early target for intervention in BPD adolescents and showed that hypermentalizing may represent an important marker to distinguish emerging BPD from adolescent turmoil. We aimed at testing if both dimensionally-assessed and categorically-diagnosed BPD was selectively associated with hypermentalizing errors on the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC) task in Italian adolescent inpatients and community adolescents. Findings The sample was composed of 58 Italian adolescents who were consecutively admitted to an adolescent psychiatry unit in Rome, Italy. BPD was assessed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 Personality Disorders (SCID-5-PD); the MASC task was used to assess mentalizing. Findings supported the hypothesis of a specific link between BPD features and hypermentalizing in adolescent inpatients. Both dimensionally-assessed and categorically-assessed BPD showed significant and non-negligible associations with hypermentalizing. The overall performance on the MASC task significantly discriminated BPD adolescents from Italian community-dwelling adolescents. Conclusions Our findings supported the hypothesis that specific deficits in mentalization–namely, hypermentalizing–may play a crucial role in the developmental pathway leading to emerging BPD in adolescence.

In an online sample of 1054 Italian community-dwelling adults, we assessed the relationships between the frequency of implementation of practices intended to prevent COVID-19 infection, degree of agreement with theories about the origin of the infections, and the frequency of use of different sources of information concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. The results showed that participants’ COVID-19-related preventive behaviors and causal beliefs were significantly associated with selected demographic variables and frequency of use of specific sources of information (e.g. scientific journals vs social media).

To evaluate the relationships between body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) and Alternative DSM-5 Model for Personality Disorder (AMPD) criterion A and dysfunctional personality trait (i.e., criterion B) measures, 420 Italian community-dwelling women were administered three measures of BDD (i.e., the Body Dysmorphic Disorder Questionnaire, the Body Dysmorphic Disorder-Dimensional Scale, and the Appearance Anxiety Inventory), as well as the Level of Personality Functioning Scale-Brief Form (LPFS-BF) and the Personality Inventory for DSM-5-Short Form (PID-5-SF). The three BDD measures showed substantial convergent validity correlations and could be reliably cumulated to obtain the BDD Cumulative Index (BDDCI). Several significant, nonnegligible correlations were observed between the BDDCI as well as the LPFS-BF scale scores and PID-5-SF personality trait scale scores. Relative importance weight analysis results showed that LPFS-BF scale scores and PID-5-SF trait scale scores were substantial predictors of the BDDCI scores (R = 0.42, f = 0.72). In particular, AMPD criterion A impairment in self-functioning and AMPD criterion B depressivity, anhedonia, perseveration, separation insecurity, and cognitive and perceptual dysregulation were core components of the dysfunctional personality profile associated with BDD.