Maria Cristina Verrocchio

G. d’Annunzio University, Chieti, Italy · Department of Psychological Sciences, Health and Territory

Two hundred and fifty-seven undergraduate psychology students in Chieti, Italy completed an anonymous and confidential survey regarding their childhood exposure to parental alienation, psychological maltreatment, and measures of current functioning. Results revealed high levels of reported exposure to parental alienation behaviors by those whose pa...

Mental disorders are associated with many difficulties in the activities of daily living, work, relationships and family, and they determine high social and economic costs that represent an important public health problem. The literature has shown that children of parents with mental disorders grow up in environments that are potentially harmful to...

Seven hundred and thirty nine adults in Chieti, Italy completed an anonymous and confidential paper and pencil survey regarding their childhood exposure to 20 parental loyalty conflict behaviors (one parent made untrue and negative statements about the other parent, one parent asked the child to keep secrets from the other parent, and the like), ps...

Psychological factors are known predictors of cardiovascular disease in many clinical settings, but data are lacking for HIV infection. We carried out a prospective cohort study to evaluate potential psychological predictors of preclinical and clinical vascular disease in HIV patients. HIV patients were consecutively enrolled. Demographics, viral a...

This study examines several psychological reports to verify whether consultant psychologists use scientifically based procedures during clinical assessment of sexually abused children. To address our aims, first we propose a methodological premise on mixed-method approaches and on the methodological appropriateness paradigm. We then provide a conte...

The Dark Personality (DP) refers to a combination of three specific traits-narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy-characterized by a focus on self-centered goals, lack of empathy, manipulative behavior, and a tendency for abusive conduct in interpersonal relationships. Recently, sadism has been added to these traits and seems to play a key role...

Sexual abuse is defined as the act of making someone take part in unwanted sexual activities, against their will, or without their agreement. Sexual activities encompass not only the sexual intercourse but also different forms of nonconsensual erotic contact and other forms not involving direct contact such as voyeurism or exhibitionism. A sexual o...

In sports environments, children may be at risk for maltreatment and abuse. An overview of the national and international prevention and counter-phenomenon initiatives is provided to summarize best practices aimed at ensuring a safe environment for playing sports. The best practices from the document analysis refer to training and awareness-raising...

Objective The impact of maternal stress on birth outcomes is well established in the scientific research. The sex ratio at birth (SRB), namely the ratio of male to female live births, shows significant alteration when mothers experience acute stress conditions, as proposed by the Trivers‐Willard Hypothesis. We aimed to synthetize the literature on...

Previous studies with the eye-tracking technology have predominantly tracked eye parameters in response to a single simple stimulus, and have generated interesting - sometimes inconsistent - results in research on deceptive behavior. The present study analyzed visual patterns in response to a complex image, to investigate potential differences in e...

The COVID-19 pandemic tremendously impacted people’s day-to-day activities and mental health. This article describes the dataset used to investigate the psychological impact of the first national lockdown on the general Italian population. For this purpose, an online survey was disseminated via Qualtrics between 1 April and 20 April 2020, to record...

Purpose Orthorexia nervosa (OrNe) is a potentially pathological condition characterized by a fixation on healthy diet. An increasing number of studies have been conducted on this mental preoccupation, but the validity and reliability of some of the psychometric instruments employed in its assessment are still under debate. Among these measures, the...

The COVID-19 pandemic imposed changes on day-to-day activities and had a detrimental psychological effect on the population, especially among vulnerable individuals, such as adolescents and young adults. The current study aimed to explore variables associated with anxiety, depressive and somatic symptoms in a sample of 608 Italian young adults aged...

Purpose Recent studies pointed out the importance to distinguish orthorexia nervosa (ON) from non-problematic forms of interest with healthy eating. This distinction needs to be further explored since it may favor a better comprehension of the relationship between orthorexic behaviors and psychopathology and lead to an improved understanding of the...

The present study aimed at understanding the personality features of mothers and fathers engaged in parental alienation—a family dynamic in which one parent behaves in a way that foments a child’s unfounded emotional rejection of the other parent. The process is considered a complex form of child psychological maltreatment, with significant negativ...

An increase of domestic violence is described since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Childhood maltreatment is a risk factor potentially predictive of negative parental behaviors. Parents with high levels of neuroticism and parental burnout could engage in child abuse. According to the literature, stressed parents could act the same abusive...

The COVID-19 pandemic is far more than a health crisis: it has unpredictably changed our whole way of life. As suggested by the analysis of economic data on sales, this dramatic scenario has also heavily impacted individuals’ spending levels. To better understand these changes, the present study focused on consumer behavior and its psychological an...

The COVID-19 outbreak has exposed healthcare professionals (HPs) to increased workloads and a high risk of contagion. The present study aimed at examining the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on the mental health of HPs in Italy, investigating the role of attachment style, personality traits, and sociodemographic variables. An online survey was adm...

The Italian lockdown following the spread of COVID‐19 exposed residents to a long and unexpected period of managing offspring at home. Throughout this time, most parents continued to work remotely. The present research aimed at assessing multiple sociodemographic and psychological variables for parental well‐being during the lockdown. An online sur...

The worldwide spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has unpredictably changed the way people live, by influencing their behaviors and beliefs [1], [2], [3]. This article presents the raw data that have been used to investigate how the pandemic affected people's beliefs and expectations about their future [4]. A total of 3991 participants (18-85 years old...

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the future are hardly predictable, and people differ in terms of expected repercussions on their future. This study investigated individual differences in the pandemic's expected repercussions, with particular attention to a Balanced Time Perspective (BTP). BTP reflects an individual profile with optimal temp...

Objectives: to assess the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on parenting in families with pediatric age children and examine how parental burnout can be influenced by the presence of one or more children with certified diagnosis of full-blown physical or psychological-psychiatric pathology. Methods: the sample consisted of 970 parents with pediatric...

Adverse childhood experiences are significant risk factors in the development of adolescent borderline personality disorder symptoms (BPDs). Theorists have posited that two personality vulnerabilities factors, self-criticism and dependency, may inform our understanding of this relationship. However, no research has examined the associations between...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) health crisis is strongly affecting the psychological well-being of the general population. According to a very recent literature, the imposed lockdown and social distancing measures have generated a series of negative outcomes, including fear of the future, anxiety, and somatization symptoms. Few studies hav...

Objectives Older adults have been identified as a high-risk population for COVID-19, therefore it is crucial to understand how they perceived and reacted to the emergency. We examined age-related differences in emotions, cognitive attitudes, and behavioral responses to the COVID-19 crisis. Based on the Socioemotional Selectivity Theory, we expected...

Background and Objective: Currently, climate change represents an existential, physical, and psychological threat. Therefore, mitigation and adaptation actions and measures have become increasingly necessary to preserve individual and collective well-being. The psychological distance is one of the main psychological constructs that explains the mos...

Gambling disorder (GD) is an important public health problem, with high prevalence rates. A review of studies investigating the relationship between problem gambling and suicidality (suicidal ideation, suicidal attempts and death by suicide) has been conducted. The PsycInfo and PubMed databases were used by entering gambl* AND suicid* as keywords....

The spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has called for unprecedented measures, including a national lockdown in Italy. The present study aimed at identifying psychological changes (e.g., changes in depression, stress, and anxiety levels) among the Italian public during the lockdown period, in addition to factors associated with these chan...

Objective Worldwide, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has generated significant worry, uncertainty, anxiety, sadness, and loneliness. In Italy, these effects have been particularly pronounced. While research on the COVID-19 outbreak has mainly focused on the clinical features of infected patients and the psychological impact on the...

On January 30th 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 pandemic a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). Italy has been one of the most affected countries in the world. To contain further spread of the virus, the Italian government has imposed an unprecedented long-period lockdown for the entire country....

Since the initiation of the COVID-19 lockdown, Italian parents have been forced to manage their children at home. The present study aimed at investigating the psychological distress of parents during the lockdown, identifying contributing factors. An online survey was administered to 833 participants from 3 to 15 April 2020. Mediation and moderated...

Introduction. Hypersexuality is characterized by excess of sexual activities, obsession of sex and related consequences. On the other hand, the assessment of problematic sexuality includes several psychometric tools to screen hypersexual behavior. Hypersexual Behavior Inventory is one of these, although its Italian version is not current available....

The COVID-19 health crisis is strongly affecting the mental health of the general population. In particular, the pandemic may be producing psychological distress and collateral concerns for parents in lockdown, due to unstable financial circumstances, school closures, and suspended educational services for children. A call for measures to increase...

Parental alienation (PA) describes a family dynamic in which a parent engages in behaviors that are likely to foster a child’s unjustified rejection of the other parent. PA is considered a particular form of child psychological maltreatment with both short- and long-term negative consequences. Parents who attempt to turn a child against the other p...

The Chieti Affective Action Videos (CAAV) is a new database designed for the experimental study of emotions in psychology. The main goal of the CAAV is to provide a wide range of standardized stimuli based on two emotional dimensions: valence and arousal. The CAAV is the first database to present emotional stimuli through videos of actions filmed a...

Introduction : Several studies have been conducted that show that there is a significant relation between psychological stress and psoriasis. The existence of a relationship between stress, emotional regulation and the exacerbation of diffuse plaque psoriasis has been hypothesized

The Parents Preference Test (PPT) is a graphical test comprised of 24 easy to understand images of daily family life, which is widely used in forensic assessments of parenting skills. Nevertheless, the PPT lacks validity scales to detect participants' attitudes toward the test; this is an important oversight, as the tendency to demonstrate faking-g...

Background and Purpose: A psychological assessment of parents in post-divorce child custody disputes highlighted parents’ motivation to appear as adaptive and responsible caregivers. The study hypothesized that personality self-report measures completed by child custody litigants (CCLs) during a parental skills assessment would show underreporting,...

Among the factors that are thought to underlie gambling problems, alexithymia has been recognized to contribute to their development. For the first time, we reviewed the literature on the relationship between alexithymia and gambling. A systematic search of literature was run in the major reference databases including PubMed, Cochrane Database for...

Background and Objective: Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM) is a complex and wide spread problem and is considered one of the most frequent chronic metabolic conditions during pregnancy. According to a recent consensus conference held in Italy, new technologies can play a role in the so-called process of fertilization of the individual's ecosyste...

Background The current study is aimed at examining the relationship between exposure to parental alienation (PA) behaviors, depression, and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in Italian adults. Methods Four hundred ninety-one adults were tested. Participants filled out the following self-rating scales: The Baker Strategy Questionnaire (BSQ), t...

Parental alienation (PA) is a family dynamic in which a parent engages in behaviors that are likely to foster a child’s unjustified rejection of the other parent. The developmental mechanism of PA has been explained with hypotheses that range from specific behaviors of one parent to an interaction of many factors including behaviors of both parents...

A number of studies have investigated the role of coping and social support as protective factors for psychosocial adjustment after amputation. In contrast, few have focused on the role of attachment styles. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between attachment insecurity, social support, coping strategies and nega...

Early relationships have a modeling effect on multiple aspects of mental and somatic health. This paper aims at examining evidence of the associations between aversive childhood relationships and disease risk factors in adulthood fromexperimental, obser-vational, and epidemiologic studies. Particular attention has been paid to the links with epigen...

Results: half of the participants in the study work during the night shift (50.6%), another percentage suffer from medical pathologies (41.6%) and follow drug therapies regularly (33.8%); significant positive correlations emerged among some MAWS scales (autonomous motivation, ego ideal - item 7,8, motivation for medical work - item 3,4) and psychol...

Background and Purpose: Research on the relationship between response latency (RL) and faking in self-administered testing scenarios have generated contradictory findings. We explored this relationship further, aiming to add further insight into the reliability of self-report measures. We compared RLs and T-scores on the MMPI-2-RF (validity and res...

Several studies have demonstrated that child maltreatment (psychological, physical, and sexual abuse, and neglect) may be a significant factor in the development of pathological personality traits that increase the risk for suicidal ideation and behavior from adolescence to adulthood. Currently, the challenge is to understand how different forms of...

1. La PAS (Parental alienation syndrome) e il dibattito scientifico internazionale 2. Cosa si intende oggi con alienazione genitoriale 3. Le Conseguenze psicologiche dell'alienazione genitoriale 4. Linee di intervento: programmi, modelli e strategie

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between exposure to Parental Alienation (PA) at different developmental time periods and psychological maltreatment. Three hundred and sixty‐one adults in Chieti, Italy completed an anonymous and confidential paper and pencil survey regarding their childhood exposure to twenty PA behaviour...

Background: Worldwide, prisoners are at high risk of suicide. Reducing the number of suicides in jails and prisons is an international priority. Several risk factors for suicide attempts, such as historical, prison-related, psychosocial and clinical factors, have been found in prisoners. We assessed whether demographic, conviction-related and neur...

Aging cognitive decline has been associated to impairment of the Hypothalamus Pituitary Adrenals (HPA) axis activity and a higher level of the systemic inflammation. However, little is known about the molecules driving this process at peripheral level. In addition, the cognitive function is to some extent modifiable with Memory Training (MT) progra...

Objectives: We aimed to describe a sample of subjects admitted to a psychiatric unit after the intake of psychoactive substances for recreational purposes. Methods: Between June and September 2015, 49 subjects were included. Sociodemographic characteristics and psychopathological aspects were investigated, and urine samples for further analysis...

Parental alienation is a post-divorce family dysfunction characterized by a children’s unjustified rejection of a parent in response to inter-parental conflict and loyalty issues. Researchers and clinicians have developed a number of interventions specifically targeted to children who refuse visitation with a parent and their family. Following PRIS...

The current study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Italian validation of the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ), conceived as a measure of self-criticism and dependency, i.e. two personality factors acting, according to Blatt (2004), as risk factors for depression in particular and psychopathology in general. A series of standar...

Insecure attachment and the personality dimensions of self-criticism and dependency have been proposed as risk factors for suicide in adolescents. The present study examines whether self-criticism and dependency mediate the relationship between insecure attachment styles and suicidality. A sample of 340 high-school students (73.2% females), ranging...

This study examined associations between exposure to parental alienation behaviors (PA) and anxiety and depression in a community sample of Italian adults. Data were examined by the gender of the alienating parent and the gender of the respondent/adult child. Five hundred nine adults were administered the Baker Strategy Questionnaire (BSQ), the Sta...

Background Mental pain, defined as a subjective experience characterized by perception of strong negative feelings and changes in the self and its function, is no less real than other types of grief. Mental pain has been considered to be a distinct entity from depression. We have performed a systematic review analyzing the relationship between ment...

Background. Anxiety and depression have been considered to be neglected disorders in epilepsy. Because panic disorder is one of the most important anxiety disorders, it has been problematic to use very comprehensive anxiety questionnaires in epilepsy patients, as panic attacks and epileptic seizures, although two distinct clinical entities from a d...

The aim of this study was to examine associations between exposure to alienating behaviors (ABs) and anxiety and depression as mediated through psychological maltreatment and parental bonding in a sample of Italian adults in the community. Five hundred and nine adults were given a measure of exposure to ABs, the Baker Strategy Questionnaire; the Ps...

Children of parents with mental illness are at risk for multiple negative outcomes, including child maltreatment. The purpose of this paper was to illustrate effects of psychiatric disorders on parenting and the relationship between parental mental illness and child maltreatment. We examinated several studies that investigated factors associated wi...

Objective: The objective of this research was to identify retrospectively the alienating behaviors and the parental bonding that occurred in an Italian sample of adults whose had parents separated or divorced and their associations with self-esteem and psychological distress. Methods: Four hundred seventy adults in Chieti, Italy, completed an anony...

Italy has experienced a rapid growth in gambling accessibility, expenditures and problems. Gambling-related cognitive distortions are established risk factors for disordered gambling, although little is known about the role of gambling-related cognitive distortions among Italians. To establish a valid tool for assessing these distortions, an Italia...

The Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is the most commonly diagnosed personality disease in clinical population (Widiger & Trull, 1993), but latest studies (Fonseca-Pedrero et al., 2011; Trull, 1995) showed that this disorder occurs also in nonclinical samples. Therefore, the evaluation of the BPD traits is important also in nonclinical populat...

This study addresses a particular form of child psychological maltreatment, exposing a child to alienating behaviors in the context of a high degree of conflict between the parents. The objective of this research was to identify retrospectively the alienating behaviors that occurred in an Italian sample of children and the reported associated psych...

Seven hundred and thirty nine (739) Italian adults completed a survey about (A) the extent to which each parent engaged in parental alienation behaviors (B) the extent to which each parent engaged in psychological maltreatment and (C) a measure of parental bonding for each parent. Associations between these variables were examined for each parent a...

Low-dose aspirin and neurocognitive function in inmates. A cross-sectional study in two prisons of Central Italy VADINI F, MAZZOTTA E, TRACANNA E, VERROCCHIO MC, LITERIO P, FULCHERI M, PARRUTI G Introduction. The neurocognitive dysfunction is common in the jail population. Several studies reported deficits in memory and executive function, and high...

Il maltrattamento psicologico è una reiterazione di pattern comportamentali o modelli rela-zionali ritenuti psicologicamente dannosi in quanto creano nel bambino l'idea che vale po-co, è imperfetto, non amato, non desiderato o che vale solo se soddisfa i bisogni altrui. Esso comprende atti di commissione (abuso emotivo) e di omissione (trascuratezz...

La presente ricerca si propone di verificare le proprietà psicometriche di una traduzione italiana della Psychological Maltreatment Measure (PMM-I) in un campione di popolazione generale, composto da 739 partecipanti di nazionalità italiana. È stata esplorata la struttura fattoriale dello strumento, indagata la coerenza interna ed esaminata sia la...

Psychological maltreatment involves a repeated pattern of caregiver behavior or a serious incident that transmits to the child that he is worthless, flawed, unloved, unwanted, endangered, or only of value in meeting another's needs. It is defined as both acts of commission (emotional abuse) and omission (emotional neglect). The aims of this review...

This research aims to evaluate the psychometric properties of an Italian version of the Psychological Maltreatment Measure (PMM-I) in a sample of 739 community members. The factor structure of the measure was explored, and internal consistency was tested. Finally, concurrent validity of the PMM-I with a measure of parental care and predictive valid...