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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (31)
The authors report a case of a sexual serial killer responsible for four homicides (one homosexual and three prostitutes) over a 12‐year period. The perpetrator was diagnosed with a severe personality disorder and necrophilia at the time of the crimes and was declared partially mentally impaired and dangerous to societal security by the Court of Ju...
Background
We set out to assess the appropriateness of current placement of mentally disordered offenders allocated by the courts in Italy to REMS or to forensic community residences. We hypothesised that as in other countries, the match between a standardised assessment and the decision of the court would be imperfect.
Methods
The DUNDRUM Toolkit...
Objective: The primary aim of this study was to conduct a comparative analysis of homicide cases and their perpetrators with psychotic illnesses in Italy and Turkiye, identifying the extent to which country-specific factors influence offender profiles and crime-scene characteristics.
Method: This cross-national chart review study recruited individ...
Although sex and gender differences are well-known in psychiatry, their research in the forensic psychiatric population is still limited. This study is aimed at bridging this gap by examining gender-specific factors and treatment needs among forensic psychiatric patients who are highly dangerous. By retrospectively analyzing data from a 1-year obse...
The article examines the controversy over mental manipulation by showing that the reasons for disagreement lie in unclear conceptualization. The literature on mental manipulation is often tainted by the specious use of the metaphor of "brainwashing." This is sometimes used as a pretext to emphasize the irrationality of manipulation and its location...
Background
We set out to assess the appropriateness of current placement of mentally disordered offenders allocated by the courts in Italy to REMS or to forensic community residences. We hypothesised that as in other countries, the match between a standardised assessment and the decision of the court would be imperfect.
Methods
The DUNDRUM Toolkit...
Background
Excellence is that quality that drives continuously improving outcomes for patients. Excellence must be measurable. We set out to measure excellence in forensic mental health services according to four levels of organisation and complexity (basic, standard, progressive and excellent) across seven domains: values and rights; clinical orga...
The Italian mafia organizations represent a subculture with values, beliefs and goals that are antithetical to and undermining of the predominant society. The conduct of individual members includes such extreme violence for material gain, it may at least superficially suggest a severe personality disorder. Since the first edition of the DSM and int...
The legislative process that led to the closure of the Judicial Psychiatric Hospitals (OPG), replaced by the Residences for the Execution of Security Measures (REMS), constituted a significant step forward towards the establishment of a community model of care of offenders with severe socially dangerous mental disorders more respectful of human rig...
La perdita della vita a seguito di fatto illecito rappresenta una figura di danno
estremamente dibattuta in dottrina. Una recente pronuncia delle Sezioni Unite della
Suprema Corte di Cassazione ha confermato un consolidato orientamento della giurisprudenza di legittimità, ribadendo l’esclusione della possibilità che il danno da morte immediata (cd....
About 40 years after the reforms leading to the closure of psychiatric hospitals (Ospedale Psichiatrico [OP]) in Italy in favor of a widespread model with a strong rehabilitation emphasis, Italy has chosen to close High Security Hospitals as well (Ospedale Psichiatrico Giudiziario [OPG]). The new forensic treatment model is expected to be more resp...
Primary impulsive aggression (PIA) can be implicated as a common factor that results in an arrest, disciplinary, and restraint measures during confinement, and criminal recidivism after release. Evidence suggests that anti-impulsive aggression agents (AIAAs) can diminish or prevent impulsive aggression even when occurring with personality pathology...
The main objective of this study was to compare readmitted (RW) and non-readmitted (NRW) female psychiatric patients after being conditionally or unconditionally released from Italian inpatient forensic psychiatry services, in order to identify variables that were significantly linked with readmission. This study included all patients who were disc...
Sex-offenders are at risk of criminal recidivism. For the treatment to be truly effective, it must be individualized. For this purpose, an accurate assessment should focus on criminological, psychological, and psychopathological features. The present study compared sex offenders with other offenders on historical experiences (i.e., problems with vi...
The Italian mafia organizations represent a subculture with values, beliefs, and goals that are antithetical to and undermining of the predominant society. The conduct of individual members includes such extreme violence for material gain, it may at least superficially suggest a severe personality disorder. Since the first edition of the DSM and in...
Background
DSM-5 provided a dimensional model of personality disorders which may be more clinically informative for the assessment and management of prisoners than a categorical one, as diagnoses of personality disorders alone cannot explain the type of violence. The role of DSM-5 personality facets is however understudied in child molesters, and n...
The authors present an unusual criminal case of delusionally motivated, serial intrafamilial killings by a psychotic offender. Because the offender retained instrumental rationality and killed his victims by stealth, viz. surreptitious poisoning, the killing of his first victims went undetected. Persecutory delusions of being poisoned not uncommonl...
Objective. To identify the possible presence and degree of psychopathy, in a sample of detained sex offender and to further evaluate the possible effect of traumatic experiences. Materials and methods. As part of a larger national project, sex offenders of Puglia were selected among the prisoners at the Bari prison and in the detached section of Al...
The authors focus their interest on the socially deviant mafia world, especially on the question of a psychopathic dimension of individuals in mafia. From the scientific point of view this continues to be an unknow world. In all these cases, individuals in mafia, their “feats”, their profiles seem to correspond to popular conceptions of the psychop...
The Law of 30 May 2014, n. 81 represents the point of arrival of an important reform of the Italian psychiatric forensic system. With it, in fact, Italy passed from a forensic psychiatric model based on OPGs to one based on REMS. The structural and functional characteristics of the REMS are aimed at assuring general security, individual care, rehab...
Sexual offending is a highly relevant public health problem. The effectiveness of policies and interventions aimed at the reduction of violent (sexual and nonsexual) recidivism depends on our ability to develop accurate risk assessment tools. To assess the association between violence risk and psychopathy and dysfunctional personality traits in sex...
Italy is the first European country severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic after the outbreak in Wuhan. In our healthcare context, the closing of forensic psychiatric hospitals in 2014 completed the long transition from a containment approach for offenders with severe mental disorders to a model oriented to recovery and community reintegration. High...
Physical and verbal aggression can occur with significant frequency in the working life of healthcare workers. The effects of such events on the psychological health of victims of workplace aggression have been shown, but their indirect effect has not yet been studied. The present brief report describes an exploratory study investigating the effect...
Post-traumatic stress disorder (Ptsd) can arise as a secondary condition to a
primary bipolar disorder, an aspect which may be overlooked by clinicians and thus
may contribute to the exacerbation of the bipolar disorder itself. the occurrence of
manic symptoms can have a traumatic impact on a patient unaware of her/his diagnosis,
especially during...
The present study was designed to compare gender differences in psychiatric diagnosis with the dimension of psychopathy in women and men who had attempted or committed homicide. The study samples consisted of 39 homicidal females and 48 homicidal males who were confined in one of Italy’s REMS or prison facilities in two southern provinces of Italy...
Background
Digital communication technologies can overcome physical, social and psychological barriers in building romantic relationships. Online romance scams are a modern form of fraud that has spread in Western societies along with the development of social media and dating apps. Through a fictitious Internet profile, the scammer develops a roma...
Digital communication technologies can overcome physical, social and psychological barriers in the construction of romantic relations. Online romance scams are a modern form of fraud spread in Western societies along with the development of social media and dating apps. The scammer develops a romantic relationship with the victim for 6-8 months, bu...
La restrizione in ambiente intramurario è un noto fattore di rischio in termini di morbidità per patologie fisiche e psichiche. L'impatto di una pandemia quale la COVID-19 sul sistema penitenziario, caratterizzato da plurime criticità in termini di gestione sanitaria, rischia potenzialmente di determinare gravi effetti sulla salute di detenuti e op...
The regulatory changes that led to the closure of the Italian forensic psychiatric hospitals (OPGs) and the establishment of the residencies for execution of security measures (REMS) have led to significant legal and care-related changes. The legislator's decision not to change the Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure, as well as the Penitent...