Ana Bártolo

Research is still needed to promote the development of structured art-based programs in prisons to strengthen socio-emotional skills. “Free Spirits” emerges as an innovative intervention that involves artistic and participatory co-creation dynamics in theater and music. A mixed-method quasi-experimental study was conducted in a Portuguese prison. U...

Background Burnout is an occupational syndrome, with a higher prevalence in professionals whose close involvement with other people is significant. There is a great diversity of professionals at risk of burnout, and therefore the implementation of intervention programs is relevant, as helping people to maintain their mental and emotional health ena...

Objective The ‘Connected We St@nd’ is an online self-management intervention programme for people receiving in-centre haemodialysis and family caregivers that combines an educational and psychosocial support component. This study aimed to evaluate its feasibility and acceptability before proceeding to a large-scale trial. Design This was a pre-pos...

Breast cancer is one of the most diagnosed cancers among women. Its effects on the cognitive and wellbeing domains have been widely reported in the literature, although with inconsistent results. The central goal of this review was to identify, in women with breast cancer, the main memory impairments, as measured by objective and subjective tools a...

This study aims to develop and evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of an intervention program designed to foster soft skills among primary-school students. Conducted in Portugal, the program employed face-to-face sessions and involved 2958 fourth-grade students from nine municipalities. The program “Players of Dreams” (PD) [“Brincadores de S...

Background: There has been a growing interest in environmental education programs to improve environmental awareness and behavior change among school-aged youth. Yet, assessment of the approaches aligned with citizen science principles emphasizing community participation and empowerment is scarce. The present study aimed to explore the acceptabilit...

This study aimed to adapt the Compassion Fatigue-Short Scale to Portugal and examine the reliability and validity of the Portuguese version of the scale (Pt-CF-Short Scale) among Portuguese firefighters. The factor structure of the Pt-CF-Short Scale was compared to the one-factor model fit and a two-factor model and second-order factor model in a s...

O presente manual é baseado no Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association: the Official Guide to APA Style, 7th Edition, e constitui-se como um guia prático que oferece um conjunto de orientações para a elaboração de citações e referências bibliográficas. Integra diferentes tipos de documentos, em diversos formatos, servindo de su...

Firefighters have high exposure to traumatic events and have an increased risk of developing symptoms related to trauma. The current study assessed the psychological morbidity, empathy and alexithymia of volunteer firefighters compared to career firefighters and to non-firefighter comparators from the general population. Group differences were asse...

Research usually investigates adolescents and young adults (AYA) with cancer in combination with younger and older cancer patients and survivors. However, AYAs with cancer are a unique group, and their caregivers’ experience may also differ from other caregivers of cancer survivors. This systematic review aims to understand the impact of a cancer d...

Cognitive difficulties are highly prevalent and negatively impact cancer survivors’ quality of life. The UCLA Cognitive Rehabilitation Intervention Program (in short, UCLA program) is an evidence-based intervention developed and tested in the US to address the cognitive complaints of cancer survivors. Since there are no cognitive rehabilitation pro...

In 2020, around 60,000 people were diagnosed with cancer in Portugal, and many of them suffered some level of Fear of Progression (FoP) of the disease. Although this FoP is realistic, and is part of the normal and appropriate response to this type of disease, there is no instrument to assess and understand whether it is exaggerated in the face of t...

Patients with kidney failure need lifelong renal replacement therapy to survive and, worldwide, in-centre haemodialysis is the most common modality. The efficacy of this treatment largely depends on the patients' adherence to several health behaviours. According to Leventhal's self-regulation model, patients' illness perceptions can be a key factor...

Revisão sistemática sobre a eficácia de intervenções psicossociais com recurso à tecnologia digital para pais de crianças e/ou adolescentes com cancro.

This study presents a systematic review of the sociodemographic, clinical, and psychosocial factors associated with distress in elderly cancer patients. Relevant studies were identified using four electronic databases: PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and ProQuest. Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies exploring factors associated with distress in...

Fear is a powerful emotion that can influence future behavior. This study investigates how fear influences the relationship between vicarious violence at work and employees' work ability. This is a quantitative cross-sectional study. Self-report data were collected from 154 Portuguese nurses who completed an online survey. Statistical significance...

Introduction The preservation of a well-functioning arteriovenous fistula (AVF) is crucial for successful dialysis in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD); nonetheless, complications are frequent which leads to lower quality of life, hospitalisations and death. Self-care behaviours help to reduce the risk of complications and family caregiv...

Purpose To systematically review the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions developed for informal caregivers of hemodialysis patients. Methods Relevant studies were identified through five electronic databases: PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest, and the CENTRAL. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi-experimental studies descri...

This study researched how age predicts women’s cognitive and emotional appraisal of sex pictures. One hundred and fifty five women were exposed to romantic, sexually moderate and sexually explicit pictures. Women reported on the emotional valence, subjective sexual arousal, and level of sexual content attributed to the pictures; women’s sexual beli...

The number of entrepreneurship education programs (EEP) has increased exponentially over the past two decades. However, a systematic review has not yet been carried out to confirm the effectiveness of EEPs and their presence in the current global world. The main objective of this study was to provide a systematic synthesis of EEP, exploring their c...

Lung cancer (LC) is one of the most common types of cancer disease worldwide. Studies in the field show that the appearance of a pathology of this form causes changes not only in the patient’s life, namely psychological problems, functional limitations and poorer health due to the clinical consequences of treatments, but also in their family, where...

The current study examined whether an attentional bias exists for reproduction-related visual cues among breast cancer survivors and its relationship with fertility concerns and emotional distress. Breast cancer survivors (n = 38) aged 18–40 were compared to 37 healthy women recruited from the general population. Attentional bias was investigated u...

The number of entrepreneurship education programs (EEP) has increased exponentially over the past two decades. However, a systematic review has not yet been carried out to confirm the effectiveness of EEPs and their presence in the current global world. The main objective of this study was to provide a systematic synthesis of EEP, exploring their c...

The aim of this study was to assess the acceptability of an online assessment protocol developed to explore patients' and caregivers' psychosocial adjustment to End-Stage Renal Disease.

Background: end-stage renal disease (ESRD) is an advanced stage of irreversible renal failure. To survive, patients must undergo lifelong treatment (e.g., dialysis) and manage complex health behaviours. Treatment adherence in this population is a heavy burden that is often shared with family caregivers. Therefore, exploring patients’ and caregivers...

Breast cancer diagnosis can threaten fertility and biological motherhood in women of reproductive age due to the gonadotoxic effects of treatments. Much evidence documents these women fertility-related concerns and distress, but no study has attempted to understand how implicit cognitive processes can contribute to this maladjustment. In this resea...

Psychological aggression perpetrated by customers, coworkers, and supervisors is a behavior frequently experienced in the workplace with negative consequences for an individual’s health. The aim of this systematic review was to examine the personal outcomes of overt workplace psychological aggression and summarize empirical evidence on how to preve...

Higher education students lack skills to deal in a positive way with the crises inherent to the developmental phase in which they find themselves. However, the complexity of the current global context adds an urgent need for them to be resilient. For this purpose, it is necessary to evaluate their capacity for resilience, which requires the use of...

Os estudantes do ensino superior carecem de suporte na superação das crises inerentes à fase desenvolvimental em que se encontram, bem como em lidar com as adversidades. No entanto, a complexidade do contexto global atual acrescenta-lhes uma necessidade premente de apoio psicológico. Este estudo tem como objetivo apresentar um instrumento que se re...

Background and Purpose A violence prevention climate is critical for nurses’ well-being but also for nursing practice and the quality of care. This study examined the reliability and factor validity of the European Portuguese version of the 12-item Violence Prevention Climate Scale (VPCS). Methods Data came from a sample of 120 nurses providing ca...

Policing is a stressful occupation, which impairs police officers' physical/mental health and elicits burnout, aggressive behaviors and suicide. Resilience and coping facilitate the management of job stress policing, which can be operational or organizational. All these constructs are associated, and they must be assessed by instruments sensitive t...

This study aimed to compare measures of religiosity and spirituality in the experience of positive and negative emotions. For this purpose, a measure of non-spiritual religiosity (Religious Sense Scale) was developed. Method: The study has been conducted on a sample of 279 participants aged between 19 and 69 (M=24.42, SD=9.463) who completed a ques...

Background The threat to fertility due to anticancer treatments can be distressing to women who wish to complete their family. The current study assessed the fertility-related concerns, psychological distress and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of breast cancer survivors in comparison to non-cancer women with infertility history and to healt...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of the 18-item Reproductive Concerns After Cancer Scale (RCACS) among young adult female cancer survivors. Methods The psychometric validation was conducted based on a convenience sample of 192 cancer survivors aged between 18 and 40 years. An e...

Research has demonstrated that policing is a stressful occupation and that this stress has a negative impact on police officers’ mental and physical health, performance, and interactions with citizens. Mental health at the workplace has become a concern due to the costs of depression, anxiety, burnout, and even suicide, which is high among police o...

Background: Cancer treatments may compromise fertility and family building in reproductive-age women. Previous research has shown that younger women with cancer experienced several reproductive health concerns. Objective: The aim of this study was to conduct a focused review of existing research about the subjective perceptions of reproductive c...

Biological motherhood plays an important role in the lives of many young women facing breast cancer and threats to reproduction may be disruptive. In this study, we explored the indirect effects of the importance of parenthood and childlessness on depression and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among cancer patients 18-40 years of age (n = 10...

A partir do diagnóstico de necessidades neste grupo de doentes, com o trabalho de um grupo alargado de especialistas na área, criou-se um modelo de intervenção, chamado U-Care. Este modelo define um programa que pretende satisfazer necessidades individuais, numa perspetiva multidimensional (física, psicossocial e espiritual), no decurso da doença,...

The purpose of this review was to clarify the adequacy of the existing measures of religiosity and spirituality at the Portuguese context. A systematic survey was conducted in December 2018 and updated in June 2019 through the electronic databases EBSCO (Fonte Académica, Psyc Artcles, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, e PsycINFO); SCOPUS; Web of...

The present study examines a new factor structure and the convergent validity of the Portuguese version of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) with college students. This measure has been used to evaluate depressive symptoms in adults. The total sample included 958 college students. Data were collected from a Web-based survey carried out in...

Introduction: The present study aims to culturally adapt and explore the psychometric properties of Portuguese version of the Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test, among university students. Material and methods: A validation, cross-sectional study, with data collected through a questionnaire comprised of sociodemographic an...

The 10-item Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) has been presented as a valid measure to assess psychological distress levels in population surveys but its dimensional structure was not consensual. Our main objective was to provide a Portuguese version of the K10 exploring the reliability and factor structure of this measure. This cross-sect...

Biological functions, such as deep body temperature, vary rhythmically throughout the day and in synchrony with the individual's chronotype. The same happens with cognitive functions such as attention, or memory. While participants performed the encoding phase of a memory task, the ECG was recorded with the objective of examining the effect of the...

Although many investigations have focused on the relationship between circadian typology and cognitive performance, little is known about its influence on specific cognitive tasks such as facial recognition. In this study, eye movement measures were used to explore the effect of chronotype and time-of-day on participants’ performance in a relationa...

This cross-sectional study aims to explore age as a moderator of the association between emotional distress and functional scales of health-related quality of life. The sample includes 106 outpatients with active breast and gynecologic cancers recruited at the Gynecology Department of the Instituto Português de Oncologia de Coimbra Francisco Gentil...

The present study aimed to provide a comprehensive review of psycho-education in adults with formally diagnosed anxiety disorders, assessing its effectiveness in reducing the severity of anxiety symptoms, psychological distress, depression and pain, and improving quality of life and satisfaction with treatment. A systematic search was conducted usi...

Purpose: To provide a comprehensive review of psycho-educational interventions using telecommunication technologies developed for adult cancer patients, assessing their effectiveness in reducing emotional distress and improving quality of life (QoL). Materials and methods: A narrative approach was used for extraction and synthesis of the data. Rele...

The Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item (GAD-7) scale has been presented as a reliable and valid measure to assess generalized anxiety symptoms in several clinical settings and among the general population. However, some researches did not support the original one-dimensional structure of the GAD-7 tool. Our main aim was to examine the factor struc...

Introduction Fatigue is a common and debilitating problem in cancer survivors. Research show that this symptom endures even in disease-free patients affecting quality of life. Returning to work is physically and emotionally demanding for this population and fatigue levels seems to predict the time taken to return to work and the ability of the work...

Introduction Generalized anxiety in young adults during college career is a serious public-health problem that untreated has a chronic course. Research has shown that the self-report questionnaire generalized anxiety disorder-7 (GAD-7) is a reliable and valid measure to assess generalized anxiety symptoms severity in heterogeneous psychiatric sampl...

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a disruptive life event that implies physical, psychological and social readjustment by the individual. This study aims to analyze the impact of post-injury psychosocial adaptation on the purpose in life and self-efficacy of inpatients and identify the mediating effect of the quality of life on the relation of these two...

Confrontation with breast and gynecologic cancer causes difficulties of psychological adaptation. In young women, the reproductive and gynecologic consequences of the disease and treatments emerge as an additional threat. This study aimed to: (i) analyze depressive symptoms, anxiety, quality of life and reproductive concerns in young women with bre...

Background: The difficulties in the psychological adaptation to the infertility diagnosis and assisted reproductive technology (ART) treatments have shown influence on the sperm quality. The biological and psychological aspects of infertility seem not to be independent. Objective: To analyze the impact of depressive symptoms, anxiety, dyadic adj...