About
69
Publications
41,539
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
1,608
Citations
Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Current institution
Publications
Publications (69)
Background
Cognitive behavioral assessment for outcome evaluation was developed to evaluate psychological treatment interventions, especially for counseling and psychotherapy. It is made up of 80 items and five scales: anxiety, well-being, perception of positive change, depression, and psychological distress. The aim of the study was to present the...
Layout and a sample of 23 items of the CBA-OE questionnaire.
Score variations in Cohen’s d from T0, appointment request, to the final session T6.
Aims: The main aim of this paper is to describe almost 30 years of work on psychological assessment using CBA, a research team, and to propose collaboration with Latin countries. Methods: The acronym CBA stands for Cognitive Behavioural Assessment and indicates both an overall approach to clinical assessment and a series of tests. Five general prin...
The acronym CBA stands for Cognitive Behavioral Assessment and indicates an overall approach of a group of researchers who developed questionnaires for clinical assessment. This paper presents two such questionnaires and reviews their application in medical settings. CBA-2.0 is a wide-ranging battery, useful to explore most adult cases that are ref...
The Italian Task Force for the Psychological Guidelines in Cardiac Rehabilitation (2003) recommended screening coronary patients for anxiety and depression and to treat adequately those emerging with these emotional disturbances. Our retrospective study had the aim to evaluate the short term efficacy of a cognitive-behavioral brief intervention on...
Our paper presents an instrument for recognising the psychological problems of caregivers: the short form of a previously validated questionnaire, the Family Strain Questionnaire.
Individuals caring for chronic patients frequently suffer from psychological problems, which are underestimated by medical professionals and, consequently, are not adequa...
To construct and validate a questionnaire that could be used to investigate the clarity of the medical information received by patients and their satisfaction with it, as well as their knowledge and opinions concerning advance directives and their associated variables.
We administered a 30-item questionnaire to 157 adult patients affected by progre...
The aim of the present study was to analyse caregivers' perceptions and opinions concerning medical information and advance directives. Fifty-one subjects (mean age 63.07+/-12.2) were enrolled and filled in some questionnaires: the Family Strain Questionnaire (FSQ), the SF-12 and a specifically assembled questionnaire which we named Communication a...
The aim of this study was to analyse the perceived stress and individual resources of people involved in health and social welfare occupations, and evaluate whether belonging to different organisational structures leads to different reactions. To this end, we used the Maslach Burnout Inventory, the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations, and the...
A new questionnaire named CBA-VE (Cognitive Behavioral Assessment for outcome evaluation) was developed to evaluate psychological treatment intervention--especially for counseling and psychotherapy. The questionnaire has 80 items and a 5 point Likert-like scale ranging from 1 = nothing to 5 = a lot. The aim of this study was to evaluate the validit...
Psychosocial support, education and self-management are important complements of rehabilitation programs. A central concept in self-management is self-efficacy, which refers to oneself confidence in reaching a desired goal. The General Perceived Self-Efficacy scale (GSE), developed to measure self-efficacy at the broadest level, could be useful in...
EuroQol-5D (EQ-5D) is a well-known generic instrument measuring quality of life in different diseases; it includes 5 dimensions (mobility, self-care, daily activities, pain-discomfort, anxiety and depression) and a Visual Analogue Scale that evaluates patients' perceived health status. The aim of this study was to verify the utility of the EQ-5D in...
The growing prevalence of chronic diseases and home-based treatments has led to the introduction of a large number of instruments for assessing the caregiving-related problems associated with specific diseases, but our Family Strain Questionnaire (FSQ) was designed to provide a basis for general screening and comparison regardless of the disease. W...
Health professionals are at risk for occupational stress, as confirmed by diverse sources including the Italian legislative decree, D.L. 626/94, the Health Promoting Hospital of the World Health Organization, and the Ottawa Charter. The aim of this study was to analyze quantitatively and qualitatively the principal sources of stress in the work env...
Background: The advanced and terminal phases of cancer are being increasingly treated at home with the aid of palliative care teams. It is well known that caregivers are overburdened emotionally, financially and physically, and some studies have demonstrated that this overload extends beyond the period of mourning. Identifying caregivers at risk of...
The economic and psychosocial impacts of Alzheimer's disease (AD) on caregivers are so well documented that they have stimulated socioeconomic regulations that are international in scope. In Italy caregivers have the right to receive economic and psychosocial aid. However, to distribute such aid the needs of caregivers, must be properly assessed. H...
The purpose of these guidelines is to provide specific recommendations in regard to psychological activities in cardiac rehabilitation (CR). Based on scientific evidence and clinical experience, the present guidelines are targeted for psychologists working in the field of cardiac rehabilitation and for the core component of CR, as well as for the h...
The present authors have developed a model for assessing caregiving-related problems and needs, the Economic, Social, Psychological and Educational Requirements Table (ESPERT). The model was based on an analysis of the international literature concerning caregiving-related problems, and current specific European and Italian legislation, as well as...
We recruited 50 cancer patients and their caregivers with the aim of extending our knowledge of emotional, personality and psychosocial variables, and comparing their reciprocal experience of the disease. The patients and caregivers were administered four of the questionnaires included in the Cognitive Behavioral Assessment 2.0, the Family Strain Q...
Considering the epidemiological data and the legislative dispositions, in Italy the risk related to smoking is widely underestimated both in the general population and among health professionals. This study reports an investigation on the tobacco habit and clinical practice carried out on 102 General Practitioners (GPs) whose names were extracted f...
All the previous studies showed an increase in survival after cardiac transplantation. Nevertheless, a certain number of patients persist, in the short- and long-term period, in leading an incorrect lifestyle. Owing to this high-risk behavioral profile clinical, psychological and social problems could arise.
We have analyzed the quality of life and...
Innovation has long been an area of interest to social scientists, and particularly to psychologists working in organisational settings. The team climate inventory (TCI) is a facet-specific measure of team climate for innovation that provides a picture of the level and quality of teamwork in a unit using a series of Likert scales. This paper descri...
The aim of this single case study was to evaluate the applicability of a graphic and statistical time-series analyses in the observation of an agitation disturbance in a 16-year-old patient who had sustained a severe traumatic brain injury. The agitation was measured using the Agitated Behaviour Scale. The experimental model was of the A-B type: ph...
This exploratory study investigated the problems encountered by caregivers of long-stay hospital patients in a persistent vegetative state.
Sixteen primary caregivers completed questionnaires designed to assess their personality, psychophysical distress, coping strategies and caregiving-related problems.
Males showed a higher level of emotional dis...
The international literature consistently shows that the psychosocial outcomes of the informal carers (caregivers) of chronically ill patients are influenced by factors such as personality traits and perceived social support, but few studies have investigated these variables in the caregivers of hemodialysed patients, and the reciprocal experience...
The Sickness Impact Profile (SIP) is one of the questionnaires most widely used for the generic evaluation of functional health status. Besides measuring functional status or quality of life, it is also a precious font of information for the psychologist in the inpatient-rehabilitative context when planning an intervention focused on the most dysfu...
The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychological and psychosocial impact of tracheostomy on the caregivers of patients who have undergone tracheostomies.
Rehabilitation facility.
Sixty-three lay caregivers of inpatients and outpatients with various underlying diseases who have undergone tracheostomies.
At the beginning of the study, the 63 c...
Our study concerns a questionnaire for the evaluation of caregiving-related problems: the Family Strain Questionnaire. The questionnaire, which is composed by a structured interview and 47 dychotomous items, was administered to 409 caregivers of patients with different kinds of chronic diseases. Factorial analysis shows a structure of 5 factors nam...
Introduzione Negli anni settanta Marilyn Bergner e un team interdi-sciplinare dell'Università di Washington-Seattle, dopo aver constatato che le misure cliniche non sempre si erano dimostrate efficaci nell'indicare i miglioramenti evidenti nei pazienti, iniziarono il progetto "Sickness Impact Profi-le" (SIP). Il SIP è stato il primo strumento di va...
Background: A postacute phase needs reliable routine screening instruments in order to identify the patients to be referred for a clinical interview with a psychologist. The aim of this study was to estimate the clinical cutoff scores of the anxiety and depression questionnaires and their clinical validity using a gold standard.Methods: The study i...
This study was designed to identify a core set of items that may characterize impaired health in chronic respiratory failure (CRF) since none of the questionnaires commonly used to measure impaired health in patients with CRF were developed for use in such patients. Questionnaire items, identified from several sources, were administered to 92 patie...
This study was designed to identify a core set of items that may characterize impaired health in chronic respiratory failure (CRF) since none of the questionnaires commonly used to measure impaired health in patients with CRF were developed for use in such patients.Questionnaire items, identified from several sources, were administered to 92 patien...
Recent specialized literature about nursing highlighted the causal link among stress, burnout and coping processes. The aim of this study was to evaluate the validity of specific instruments designed to select and manage professional nurses. The instruments studied were: Nurse Stress Index (NSI, Harris, 1989), Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI, Maslac...
A group of Italian researchers pooled their efforts to develop self-reports suitable for the Italian cultural context. The CBA (Cognitive Behavioral Assessment) project was the result of these common efforts and the battery and software called CBA 2.0 is the most representative product. This chapter discusses the version of CBA for young people, ca...
To develop a model for assessing cognitive-behavioral dysfunction in patients with heart failure, through the analysis of data gathered from clinical interviews.
One hundred sixty-six consecutive inpatients with previous or current heart failure: 125 males and 41 females, mean age 59 +/- 9.3 yrs.
Three professional psychologists independently analy...
Clinical and epidemiological studies support the hypothesis that ischaemic cardiovascular diseases are consistently associated with psychological, social and behavioural factors. Nevertheless, the joint effect of clinical characteristics and psychological variables in determining the prognosis of acute myocardial infarction survivors has been seldo...
To measure quality of life (QoL) we can use general health questionnaires or disease-specific questionnaires. The general health questionnaires express a measure of the disturbance to health as seen from the patient's viewpoint. The disease-specific questionnaires focus on a specific disease and its treatment. The general health measures used in ch...
Even if type A behavior pattern is not a typical pattern of specific social class, in Italy no research study has been conducted on blue-collar workers. In the present study we sought to identify differences in the psychological profiles of type A and non-type A Italian blue-collar subjects.
Seventy-three healthy male blue-collar workers, aged 35-5...
To provide a thorough psychological examination of patients with documented myocardial infarction (MI) enrolled in a multicenter randomized clinical trial (GISSI-2). The psychosocial variables examined include: state variables (anxiety, health-related fears, depression), psychophysical well-being in the three months preceding the acute event (depre...
Background:
The delay between onset of symptoms and coronary care unit admission is decisive in the outcome of patients with acute myocardial infarction.Objective:
To evaluate the influence of the factors that affect the delay in acute myocardial infarction treatment.Methods:
Multicenter case-control study conducted by 118 coronary care units in...
BACKGROUND. Studies on the quality of life after coronary artery by-pass grafting (CABG) have yielded discordant results. Several studies have described psychological and social improvements while others have reported a lack of change in behavioural risk factors and return to work. There have been no reports on Italian patients, and, because of the...
Anger and hostility have long been considered important factors in the etiology of essential hypertension (EH) and coronary heart disease (CHD). This case-control study investigates the association of hostility, as measured by the Cook and Medley Hostility Scale (HO), and anger, as measured by the Multidimensional Anger Inventory (MAI), with CHD an...
The greater reactivity in Type A subjects is a controversial issue. It is possible that anxiety, neuroticism and depression interact with Type A behaviour pattern, giving rise to different psychophysiological reactivity. To evaluate this hypothesis we studied 70 Italian healthy male volunteers. All were blue-collar workers. Cardiac health was confi...
Psychological assessment of respiratory patients often necessitates an understanding of their attitudes towards respiratory disease and hospitalization. The Respiratory Illness Opinion Survey (RIOS) is a 78 item questionnaire, which explores six attitude dimensions regarding respiratory illness and hospitalization, namely: 1) Optimism; 2) Specific...
Since great importance is attached in behavioral medicine and in health psychology to problems of prevention, it is only right that one of the most explored areas should be the assessment of psychosocial coronary risk factors. The best known of these factors is probably the Type A behavior pattern (TABP), a construct defined as the outcome of a per...
The psychophysiological responses to two mental stress tests (mental arithmetic and an interactive concentration task) were assessed in 168 unmedicated, male, postinfarction patients 36-69 years old. Patients also completed a standard battery of psychological tests. Psychophysiological responses were generally unrelated to age and education. Compar...
The Cognitive Behavioural Assessment-2.0 (CBA-2.0) Primary Scales is an automated assessment package investigating the cognitive-verbal response system. It consists of: (1) self-reports and questionnaires aimed at identifying and specifying patients' problems; (2) a group of programs and logical rules, implemented on personal computers, providing a...
In the present study cognitive-verbal differences are evaluated in chronic obstructive lung disease (COLD) patients. Nineteen subjects with chronic respiratory failure (CRF) and sixty subjects without CRF completed two psychometric instruments: CBA-2.0 primary scales and the respiratory illness opinion survey. The results show that social and psych...
The aim of this study was to evaluate the presence of "type A" behaviour and possible psychological distress in 373 hypertensive patients. One-hundred and ninety-five males, 56.2 +/- 6.2 years old and one-hundred and seventy-eight females, 57.1 +/- 6.2 years old, coming from the IPPPSH and still under double-blind treatment with or without a beta-b...
The purpose of this study was to analyze the cardiovascular effects induced by mental stress evoked by different stressors in patients with recent uncomplicated myocardial infarction. Twenty four males, aged 52 +/- 10 years, were studied 45 +/- 22 days after uncomplicated myocardial infarction in the absence of specific cardiovascular drugs. During...
The main purpose of this study was to make an objective assessment of emotional stability as a selection criterion in 14 heart transplant candidates (13 M, 1 F, 45.5 +/- 6.6 years). A psychometric study was conducted using Cognitive Behavioral Assessment (CBA 2.0 Primary-Scale Battery) and the Beck Depression Inventory. The main results of this stu...
Stress testing was carried out by two stressors, mental arithmetic and Sacks-Levy's test in randomized sequence, in64 male patients with a mean age of 51±7 years in NYHA Classes I or II within 3 months after acute myocardial infarction. The stress profile was obtained after drug withdrawal by continuous recording of electrocardiogram, frontal elect...
Emotional stress has been considered responsible for life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias but acute stress-induced heart failure has not been reported in man. Two patients with recent uncomplicated myocardial infarction presenting acute pulmonary edema immediately after psychologic stress testing are the object of this report. Four stressors, m...
Emotional stress has been considered responsible for life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias but acute stress-induced heart failure has not been reported in man. Two patients with recent uncomplicated myocardial infarction presenting acute pulmonary edema immediately after psychologic stress testing are the object of this report. Four stressors, m...
To investigate the influence of psychologic stress on the electrophysiology of the heart and the genesis of cardiac arrhythmias, programmed ventricular stimulation was performed in 19 patients with recent uncomplicated myocardial infarction (37 +/- 10 days after the acute episode) during control conditions and during mental arithmetic. Psychologica...
In preventive occupational industrial medicine problems relevant to psycho-social factors always interfere in medical investigation by showing up as a not clearly organic symptomatology but as a phenomenon of somatization of anxiety or as working and social setting unfitness. CBA-2.0 Primary Scale Battery, a specific questionnaire for the investiga...
The main purpose of this study was to assess whether different types of mental stress would induce cardiac activation in patients with recent myocardial infarction and, in the affirmative, to analyze the response principally about the occurrence of arrhythmias, myocardial ischemia or ventricular disfunction in order to identify 1) subjects at poten...
Stress is thought to be a coronary risk factor. The main aim of this study is the quantitative analysis of the psychophysiological and cardiovascular activation induced by mental stress in patients (pts) with recent myocardial infarction (Ml). Twenty one pts with recent Ml, after psychological assessment, underwent two consecutive stressors in rand...
Introduzione Da almeno 30 anni (1, 2) si avverte la necessità di di-sporre di prove psicodiagnostiche specificamente costruite per verificare e documentare l'efficacia nella pratica ("ef-fectiveness") dei trattamenti psicologici e psicoterapeutici, erogati sia nei servizi pubblici che in ambito privato. Prove, dunque, che siano utilizzabili con tut...
Background. All the previous studies showed an increase in survival after cardiac transplantation. Nevertheless, a certain number of patients persist, in the short- and long-term period, in leading an incorrect lifestyle. Owing to this high-risk behavioral profile clinical, psychological and social prob- lems could arise. Methods. We have analyzed...
www.gimle.fsm.it Health professionals are at risk for occupational stress, as confirmed by diverse sources including the Italian legislative decree, D.L. 626/94, the Health Promoting Hospital of the World Health Organization, and the Ottawa Charter. The aim of this study was to analyze quantitatively and qualitatively the principal sources of stres...
