Paola Gremigni

University of Bologna | UNIBO · Department of Psychology PSI

Introduction Positive sexuality, defined as the happiness and fulfillment individuals derive from their sexual experiences, expressions, and behaviors, has been linked to relationship satisfaction and health. However, the intricate associations between positive sexuality and relationship functioning and health indicators have rarely been explored f...

Background The impact of family and personal cancer history and emotional factors, such as depression and anxiety, on disease representation has received limited attention in studies investigating the development of cancer‐related worry and risk perception within the context of genetic counseling. The current study endeavors to fill this gap by exp...

Shame is an intense, difficult to regulate, self-conscious emotion that predicts aspects of poor psychological functioning and is also strongly related to early relationships. Attachment insecurities, which constitute non-specific risk factors for psychological maladjustment, have been associated with an individual’s tendency to experience shame. I...

Changing individual habits towards greener choices is an essential ingredient in tackling the environmental crisis. Engaging in green behavior may improve psychological wellbeing. Although the intention to buy green products is widespread, the eco-friendly market is struggling to leave the ground. Greenwashing can increase skepticism towards green...

Objectives: Fibromyalgia is a severe and disabling chronic pain syndrome affecting millions of people worldwide. Various patients' subgroups were identified using different atheoretical measures, hardly effective to tailor treatments. Previous literature findings showed the relevance of fibromyalgia patients' illness perceptions in adjusting to th...

Infertility constitutes an essential source of stress in the individual and couple’s life. The Infertility-Related Stress Scale (IRSS) is of clinical interest for exploring infertility-related stress affecting the intrapersonal and interpersonal domains of infertile individuals’ lives. In the present study, the IRSS was translated into Brazilian–Po...

Job satisfaction (JS) is an indicator of individual psychosocial health. Consistent evidence showed that voluntary extra-role behavior in organizations, namely organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), can also contribute to individual psychological health. JS has been found to positively influence employees’ OCB, and both JS and OCB have been fou...

Objectives: This narrative review sought to explore the main critical issues in the assessment of depression in chronic pain and to identify self-report tools that can be reliably used for measuring it. Design: Narrative review of the literature. Methods: Articles were obtained through a search of three databases and a hand search of the refer...

Background Communication of bad news plays a critical role in the physician-patient relationship, and a variety of consensus guidelines have been developed to this purpose, including the SPIKES protocol. However, little is known about physicians’ attitudes towards breaking bad news and to be trained to deliver it. This study aimed to develop and va...

Purpose This study aimed at testing the validity and reliability of the Emotional Overeating Questionnaire (EOQ) in a sample of Italian adults with obesity, overweight or normal weight. Materials and methods Participants were 314 Italian adults (72.6% females, aged 18–76 years) with obesity (27.4%), overweight (21.3%), or normal weight (51.3%), wh...

Future time perspective, perceived social support, and dispositional gratitude are topics of interest that positively influence people's psychological health. Although gratitude has been positively associated with future time perspective and social support, this is the first study to investigate its mediating role in the relationships of future tim...

Optimism and self-efficacy have been associated with psychological health. Empathy has also been found to have a unique role in community health volunteering and promote positive functioning. This study investigated whether self-efficacy and optimism were associated with psychological health in terms of psychological and subjective well-being in he...

Optimism and self-efficacy have been associated with psychological health. Empathy has also been found to promote positive functioning and to have a unique role in community health volunteering. This study investigated whether self-efficacy and optimism were associated with psychological and subjective well-being in a group of healthcare volunteers...

Measurement plays a key role in reproducibility and replicability of research findings and in confidence researchers may have in their findings to derive theoretical conclusions from them. However, the topic of measurement has received far less attention than we would have expected in the literature [1]. Although psychological measures can take a v...

This chapter analyzes the relationship between spirituality and psychological well-being. We focused on agnostics and undecided people who lie between theists as certain believers and atheists as certain non-believers. Agnostics are defined as people who consciously suspend any judgment on the existence of God as an entity outside of the experiment...

Fibromyalgia (FM) diagnosis follows the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) criteria, based on clinical evaluation and written questionnaires without any objective diagnostic tool. The lack of specific biomarkers is a tragic aspect for FM and chronic pain diseases in general. Interestingly, the endogenous opioid system is close to the immune one...

No abstract available

This study adopted a dyadic approach to explore the associations between social support and stress as mediated by coping among infertile couples. All these variables were infertility-specific. A total of 201 couples starting their first assisted reproductive technology (ART) treatment completed self-reports of infertility-specific support from spou...

Objective: To investigate how patients evaluate the provision of patient-centered care (PCC) by healthcare professionals and psychometrically test a questionnaire to assess it. A tool previously developed for self-assessment of professionals' provision of PCC was adapted into a patient-rated form, named Patient-Professional Interaction Questionnai...

Background: The Cancer Worry Scale was revised to be used in breast cancer genetic counseling (CWS-GC). This scale is used to identify dimensions that are relevant in the genetic counseling context, such as worry about developing breast cancer, impact of worries on daily life, and risk perception in women attending a counseling session for BRCA1/2...

Infertility has a stressful impact on both partners, with adverse effects on the quality of life of infertile couples. Spirituality is a meaning-based strategy that can protect couples against infertility's negative impact on quality of life, but analysis of this mediator relationship in infertile couples has not been reported. We adopted a dyadic...

Summary: Tobacco smoking by young people is of great concern because it usually leads to regular smoking, nicotine addiction and quitting difficulties. Young people "hooked" by tobacco maintain the profits of the tobacco industry by replacing smokers who quit or die. If new generations could be tobacco-free, as supported by tobacco endgame strategi...

Objective: To assess the psychometric properties of the Mindful Eating Questionnaire (MEQ). Methods: A total of 15 mindfulness experts evaluated the content of the 28 items and 5 factors of the MEQ. A sample of 1,067 Italian adults (61.4% women) completed the MEQ and other measures; 62 participants completed a 4-week test-retest. Results: Cont...

Infertility has been negatively associated with sexual satisfaction. This study aimed to estimate the relation of infertility to sexual satisfaction from a cross-cultural perspective, comparing Italian and Brazilian women. Between June 2012 and January 2013, 528 women seeking Assisted Reproduction Technology (ART) treatment in Italy (39%) or Brazil...

Objective: This study aimed to investigate whether healthcare professionals' emotional intelligence (EI) is associated with self-perceived provision of patient-centered care (PCC), taking into account the potential mediating effect of general self-efficacy (GSE). Methods: A sample of 318 healthcare professionals, recruited in 2015 among four hos...

Background: Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a rare disease characterised by a severe impairment of functional status and quality of life (QoL). Use of rehabilitative programmes may help to improve outcomes. The aim of this pre/post test case series was to evaluate the impact of a training program, including sessions of aerobic and resista...

Aims: To test whether a combined intervention of art therapy and clown visits could enhance the efficacy of oral medication in reducing children's anxiety at parental separation prior to induction of anesthesia. Background: Approximately 50% of children undergoing surgery report high anxiety at anesthesia induction. Complementary therapies have...

Questo studio esplorativo si pone l'obiettivo di confermare che aspetti psicologici come ansia, depressione, motivazione, consapevolezza qualità di vita e sostegno sociale, siao in relazione con la sindrome metabolica. I risultati mostrano che, in pazienti affetti da tale sindrome, i quali intraprendono un percorso di cambiamento dello stile di vi...

Objective: There is still an open debate about the utility of social desirability indicators. This report systematically reviewed the use of social desirability scales in studies addressing social desirability in clinical psychology. Method: A systematic review (January 2010-March 2015) was conducted, including 35 studies meeting the inclusion c...

Background: Evidence suggests that metabolic syndrome and hostility are independent risk factors for the development of coronary heart disease. Recently, the combined effect of metabolic syndrome and hostility has shown to predict the incidence of myocardial infarction. This study tested whether cynical hostility was associated with the metabolic s...

Objective: This study aimed to investigate how healthcare personnel self-evaluate their ability to relate to patients in day-to-day practice from a patient-centered perspective, and to test the psychometric properties of a questionnaire developed to assess it. Methods: A sample of 600 healthcare personnel, recruited among eight hospitals in vari...

AimTo develop and psychometrically test a brief self-report to assess the amount of infertility-related stress; to investigate how infertility-related stress was associated to socio-demographics, causes of infertility and emotional distress.Background Infertility exerts a stress effect on both personal and interpersonal areas. Due to the burden of...

Both increased disgust propensity and trait guilt have demonstrated associations with OCD symptoms. Disgust propensity and guilt cognitions both can include moral components of their negative evaluations. In particular, when the offending stimulus is the self, individuals may evaluate themselves as committing an error , resulting in feelings of gui...

Health-related quality of life was examined in 49 patients with hepatitis C virus with no psychiatric history who received interferon (IFN)-α treatment. Quality of life was assessed at baseline, at 3-time points during IFN-α therapy and at 1-6 month follow-up, using SF-36. Hepatitis C virus patients showed poorer physical functioning and better soc...

A number of outcome studies showed that kidney transplantation is associated with improvements in health-related quality of life relative to the pre-transplant period, but comparisons with the general population produced mixed results. This study aimed to compare 30 successful (>1 year) kidney transplantation recipients with 30 matched-pair healthy...

Nel corso degli ultimi anni, un numero crescente di persone ha intrapreso l'attività di clown in ambito sociale e sanitario. Questa pratica consiste nell'attuazione di tecniche clownesche, derivate dal circo e dal teatro di strada, in contesti di disagio per facilitare il processo di cura in persone che vivono un malessere personale, psichico e fis...

Some of the most recent trait-oriented, self-report instruments for measuring humor are briefly described. Assessment tools can be classified according to their primary measurement objective: Sense of humor, humor creation and/or humor appreciation, humor coping, and humor styles. Most instruments measure a global sense of humor that is the extent...

Volume in versione PDF scaricabile online da www.lulu.com

About 7–12% of individuals experience high dental anxiety and it represents a barrier to dental care. The Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS) is a brief measure of dental anxiety which is widely used in clinical practice as well as in research. The principal aims of this study were to create and validate an Italian version of the MDAS and to deter...

This study examines measurement invariance, reliability and scores differences of the Peer Aggressive and Reactive Behaviors Questionnaire (PARB-Q) across Italian and Brazilian children, gender and age. Participants were 587 Italian and 727 Brazilian children, aged 7–13 years from 12 elementary schools. The PARB-Q is a brief self-report instrument...

This study examines measurement invariance, reliability and scores differences of the Peer Aggressive and Reactive Behaviors Questionnaire (PARB-Q) across Italian and Brazilian children, gender and age. Participants were 587 Italian and 727 Brazilian children, aged 7-13 years from 12 elementary schools. The PARB-Q is a brief self-report instrument...

This study presents the psychometric properties of the Peer Aggressive and Reactive Behaviors Questionnaire (PARB-Q), a self-report questionnaire to measure child overt aggression (PA) and reaction to peer aggression (RPA). Participants were 587 Italian elementary school children, aged 7-10 years old (51.5% female). Exploratory and confi rmatory fac...

The idea that humor can be associated with mental well-being has been spreading in recent years; therefore, a discrete body of research has investigated the potential benefits of humor for mental health and psychological well-being. Some evidence has emerged that humor produces positive short-term emotional changes and may attenuate negative emotio...

Lay definitions and interpretations that ordinary (non-academic) people give to the word "humor" do not capture the complexity of this concept. In this chapter, we try to shed light on the concepts of humor and sense of humor, highlighting the differences and difficulties in finding clear definitions of them. After a brief history of the term "humo...

In recent decades, humor has become to be considered as an important component of mental and physical health other than a mere socially desirable individual's trait. Clown therapy represents a peculiar way of using humor in order to promote people's well-being. Clown therapy officially started in 1986 and presently, it is easy to meet clown doctors...

This chapter presents a brief and somewhat selective survey of the recent empirical studies dealing with humor and physical health. After summarizing the possible mechanisms by which humor and laughter may affect health, the results of fifty relevant articles published between 2001 and 2011 were analyzed. Overall, findings suggest that mirthful lau...

The topic of sexual obsessions as a psychiatric symptom has not been well investigated. The aim of this study was twofold: 1) to explore the presence of sexual obsessions in patients with mood disorders (n=156), panic disorder (n=54) and schizophrenia (n=79), with respect to non-psychiatric subjects (n=100); 2) to investigate the relationship betwe...

The present study aimed to explore specific personality traits that affect risky choices by using a relatively novel computerised card game, the Columbia Card Task, to dissociate the processes of emotional decision making (i.e., the Hot version of the task) and deliberative decision making (i.e., the Cold version). Participants were administered ei...

This study presents the psychometric properties of the Peer Aggressive and Reactive Behaviors Questionnaire (PARB-Q), a self-report questionnaire to measure child overt aggression (PA) and reaction to peer aggression (RPA). Participants were 587 Italian elementary school children, aged 7-10 years (51.5% female). Exploratory and confi rmatory factor...

a b s t r a c t The present study aimed to explore specific personality traits that affect risky choices by using a rela-tively novel computerised card game, the Columbia Card Task, to dissociate the processes of emotional decision making (i.e., the Hot version of the task) and deliberative decision making (i.e., the Cold version). Participants wer...

To contribute to the application of the Childhood Atopic Dermatitis Impact Scale (CADIS), 135 Italian parents of children with atopic dermatitis (AD) aged birth to 6 years completed: CADIS, Infants Dermatitis Quality of Life Index (IDQOL) or Children's Dermatology Life Quality Index (CDLQI), and Dermatitis Family Impact 10-item questionnaire (DFI)....

Background and purpose: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a complex chronic multi-component disease. Understanding the mechanisms of health related quality of life (HRQL) impairment should help identifying targets of pulmonary rehabilitation (PR). Research has shown positive correlations between efficacy expectations and outcome i...

One out of eight women suffers an episode of depression following delivery. We explored the role of expectations of partner support in postpartum depressive symptoms in new mothers attending a regional public hospital in Italy. Seventy women participated in a two-stage (third trimester and 3 months postpartum) prospective study using self-report me...

To evaluate whether preoperative pain sensitivity testing and emotional perception of pain could explain the level of postoperative pain after lower third molar extraction. Twenty-three patients (16 women, 7 men) scheduled for lower third molar extraction were enrolled in the study. Patients preoperatively were submitted to a nociceptive stimulus b...

This article describes the Italian validation of a scale recently developed in UK to measure different aspects of positive mental health: the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (WEMWBS). The Italian WEMWBS was administered to 345 subjects (46.7% males) aged 18 to 80 years (mean age = 39.90). One year later the scale was completed by a 52-sub...

Effective communication is an important indicator of the quality of hospital services. This paper presents the results of an intervention-research on the communication skills of the members of a hospital team in rheumatology after a training course on communication. The experience involved 23 health professionals (78.3% female, mean aged 38.3± 9.7...

Some studies have analysed the prevalence and the socio-psychological predictors of unhealthy behaviours among adolescents, but few of them have investigated the contribution of the time perspective and of the ability to organize a personal agenda on assumption of risk behaviours. This study was aimed at investigating this relation in 232 adolescen...

Aim. Starting from the evidence that not all burn patients develop a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the aim of this overview was to describe variables, which favour the development of the disorder following to burn injury and to delineate directions for a treatment. Methods. We searched articles in English related to PTSD in the population...

Researchers addressing the mental health needs of inmates reported that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was one of the most common disorders. This study examined the patterns of PTSD symptoms and their relation to the self-reported level of distress and psychological wellbeing in a sample of Italian inmates. Fifty inmates, 90% male, 54% aged...

In breve Quali sono gli elementi costitutivi dell’umorismo? Che funzione ha all’interno della società? Uomini e donne ridono per le stesse cose? Il senso dell’humour, in una coppia, aiuta a mantenere salda l’unione? Ridere serve a combattere stress e malattie? Nel rispondere a queste domande, il libro propone una rassegna aggiornata su meccanismi,...

Introduction: Patients with Eating Disorders (ED) show a reduced health related quality of life (HRQoL). Studies on coping show that women with ED tend to use avoidant strategies more than controls, but very few studies investigate the impact of coping on HRQoL in adolescents with ED, therefore this study was aimed at investigating this relationshi...

The aim of this study was to investigate changes in cognitive function following carotid endarterectomy (CEA). In 74 asymptomatic CEA patients cognitive function, depression, laterality and severity of stenosis, cerebral Computer Tomography results, and ischemic heart diseases were measured preoperatively. The sample included 31 patients with demen...

This chapter introduces a proposal for the role of information technology as a means of completing a comprehensive assessment of smoking behaviour. Smoking cessation is an important goal both in primary care and in healthcare settings. Results of the literature encourage the utilisation of self-report questionnaires to assess individual differences...

Introduction. Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) is a disorder characterized by symptoms of unknown etiology that have been attributed by patients to multiple environmental exposures when other medical explanations have been excluded. Although the pathogenesis of MCS is unknown, both physical and psychological causes have been proposed. The presen...

This study is aimed at investigating outpatients' and clients' experience of communication with a group of employees of a hospital in the North of Italy. Participants in the study were 328 patients/users who were asked to report their communicative experience with 20 hospital employees using the Health Care Communication Questionnaire (HCCQ). Emplo...

This chapter introduces a proposal for the role of information technology as a means of completing a comprehensive assessment of smoking behaviour. Smoking cessation is an important goal both in primary care and in healthcare settings. Results of the literature encourage the utilisation of self-report questionnaires to assess individual differences...

Starting from the evidence that not all burn patients develop a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the aim of this overview was to describe variables, which favour the development of the disorder following to burn injury and to delineate directions for a treatment. We searched articles in English related to PTSD in the population suffering from...

All healthcare workers' communication skills are recognised as valuable indicators of quality of care from the patient's perspective. Most of the studies measure doctor-patient communication, giving scarce attention to other professionals. This study is aimed at developing and providing preliminary validation of a questionnaire to measure outpatien...

Psychosocial factors and smoking in a group of adolescents Riassunto Introduzione. Il fumo di tabacco è un importante fattore di rischio per la salute diffuso anche tra gli adolescenti e legato a fattori biop-sicosociali ampiamente indagati in letteratura. Il presente studio indaga la relazione tra comportamento tabagico ed alcuni fattori psicosoci...