Michela Di Trani

• Dr
• PostDoc Position at Sapienza University of Rome

Language characteristics reflect the ability to connect emotions to words and thoughts, thus transforming non-verbal material into material that can be communicated to others, allowing people to share their emotional experience with others and to regulate their own emotions. In this review, we present the results from the last decade by the three m...

Background/Objectives: Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) is the most common form of EDS, characterized by joint hypermobility, skin findings, and joint pains or recurrent dislocations that may also be associated with other several extra-articular symptoms. A deficit in the affect regulation represents a risk element in the development of bo...

Background: Hypermobility Ehlers–Danlos syndrome (hEDS) is a clinical condition characterized by hypermobility and tissue fragility and is associated with chronic pain. The present study aimed to investigate the associations between affect regulation, pain perception, and psychophysical dimensions as well as alexithymic characteristics in the patho...

Background: Hypermobility Ehlers Danlos syndrome (hEDS) is a clinical condition characterized by hypermobility and tissue fragility and associated to chronic pain. The present study aimed to investigate the associations between affect regulation, pain perception and psychophysical dimensions. Methods: Twenty-five hEDS patients completed tests asses...

Aims/background: Infertility diagnosis and related treatment can cause profound psychological discomfort and a variety of psychopathological symptoms. This study aims at investigating Referential Process linguistic measures applied to autobiographical memories of women facing fertility issues, hypothesising to find different elaboration and symbol...

With the increase in infertility cases recorded over the last 20 years, there is a considerable demand for assisted reproductive treatments (ART). However, there is significant variation in the availability of such treatments across different countries. Legislation on assisted reproduction is influenced by various cultural expressions, making it se...

In recent years, aging has become a focal point of scientific research and health policies due to the growing demographic trend of an aging worldwide population. Understanding the protective and risk factors that influence aging trajectories is crucial for designing targeted interventions that support healthy aging and improve people’s quality of l...

We conducted a comprehensive umbrella review including all published meta-analyses and systematic reviews on suicide-related outcomes among adults in custody. Eligible studies were searched for in major scientific databases following the PRISMA method up to February 2023. The quality of each study was assessed using the AMSTAR-2 protocol. Twenty st...

This study aims to explore the perspectives of Italian psychologists who work in assisted reproductive treatment (ART) centres regarding their roles within multidisciplinary teams. Twenty-eight psychologists were interviewed, recorded and their transcribed text was analysed using emotional text mining. The analysis revealed four clusters representi...

The Italian army played a crucial role in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic by supplying the country with military personnel, sanitary specialists, equipment, and infrastructure. This is the first Italian study involving the entire population of the National Armed forces with the aim of investigating the psychological factors that can protect or pos...

The pandemic of covid-19 has led to the conversion from face-to-face to online learning in almost every university in the world. Online learning was perceived by stu-dents as an opportunity and an impediment to the learning process and an obstacle for social contact. The main aim of this research was to explore the representations of dis-tance lear...

Purpose The present study examines the impact of traumatic childhood experiences in people with obesity seeking bariatric surgery. It considers the presence of eating disorders (ED) in the population with obesity and tests the role of attachment and family relationships as mediators of the relationship between traumatic events and ED. Method 110 p...

Exposure to traumatic events during childhood is common, and the consequences for physical and mental health can be severe. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect appear to contribute to the onset and severity of a variety of somatic inflictions, including obesity, diabetes, cancer, a...

Background: the diagnosis of infertility and its related treatment can be traumatic, leading to profound psychological distress and a variety of psychopathological symptoms. The primary objective of this study is to contrast the linguistic features of narratives from women undergoing Assisted Reproductive Treatment with those of women not undergoi...

Ehlers–Danlos syndromes are a heterogeneous group of Heritable Connective Tissue Disorders characterized by joint hypermobility, skin hyperextensibility, and tissue fragility. Among the different types, the hypermobile Ehlers–Danlos syndrome is the most frequent and includes generalized joint hypermobility as the major diagnostic criterion. Joint h...

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease, causing joint-swelling and pain. International literature highlights that patients with RA are more likely to report high levels of alexithymia, adverse childhood events (ACEs) and stress, but studies investigating the association between these dimensions are lacking. The general aim of t...

Ehlers–Danlos syndromes (EDS) are a heterogeneous group of heritable connective tissue disorders (HCTDs) characterized by joint hypermobility, skin hyperextensibility, and tissue fragility. Among the different types, the hypermobile EDS (hEDS) is the most frequent, and includes generalized joint hypermobility as the major diagnostic criterion. Join...

The incidence of type 1 diabetes (T1D) has increased by about 3% per year over the last two decades. Continuous Insulin Subcutaneous Therapy (CSII) is widely used in the pediatric population with diabetes; however, it requires more preparation by the treating team and a careful selection of its potential users. Prescriptive provisions vary from reg...

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) has shown an increase in the incidence rate of about 3% per year over the last two decades. Continuous Insulin Subcutaneous Therapy (CSII) is widely used in the paediatric population with diabetes; however, it requires more preparation by the treating team and careful selection of potential users. Prescriptive provisions vary...

Spain is considered the world leader in the field of Organ Donation (OD). Italy has adopted the Spanish model in its health system but failed to reach the Spanish primacy. This work investigates the cultural elements influencing the choice to donate in Italy and Spain. We collected from two newspapers of Italy and Spain, all the published articles...

Infertility and related treatments can negatively affect a couple’s wellbeing. The aim of this study was to evaluate couples starting assisted reproductive treatment, differences in alexithymia and quality of life levels between partners, and the association of these psychological dimensions within the couple’s members. Data was collected in two fe...

Alexithymia is connected to adolescents' psychopathology, but the current methods of assessment present limitations. The Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA) was developed to overcome the limits of the main used self-rating scale in adults, but no studies investigated its feasibility with adolescents. This study involved 95 community...

Infertility may have a very strong emotional impact on individuals, requiring adequate support, but few studies on patients' demands toward psychological support have been conducted. This study aims to explore the emotions related to the infertility and to the Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) procedure for which patients consider useful a psy...

The physiotherapist represents a resource for the psychophysical well-being of an individual. Specific characteristics of the physiotherapist–patient relationship can influence the outcome of rehabilitation. This study aimed to explore physiotherapists’ representations on how they perceive their relationship with their patients, in order to highlig...

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a collective trauma for the world population. Psychoanalytic literature has long proposed that dreams are a key point of access for understanding the deepest functioning of the mind. Using the multiple code theory (Bucci, 1993) as a framework, this study aims to explore the emotional and cognitive responses of the gen...

Background: COVID-19 pandemic added additional burden upon healthcare systems and Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care physicians (AI) possessed crucial expertise for dealing with the pandemic. Aim of the study is to uncover specific burnout patterns among Italian AI exploring the hypothesis that burnout has a multi-cluster structure. Differences in...

PurposeThis research aims to analyze the relationship between emotional regulation and the symbolic process in autobiographical narratives of a group of individuals diagnosed with restrictive anorexia nervosa (AN), compared to a non-clinical group. The study is framed within multiple code theory (MCT) (Bucci, 1997; 2021), which considers mind–body...

Purpose: This research aims to analyze the relationship between emotional regulation and the symbolic process in autobiographical narratives in a group of individuals diagnosed with restrictive Anorexia Nervosa (AN), compared to a non-clinical group. The study is framed within Multiple Code Theory MCT (Bucci, 1997; 2021) which considers mind-body i...

The COVID-19 pandemic has indiscriminately involved the whole world, producing a collective trauma that may have activated socially shared mental processes. It was hypothesized that the content of dreams could reflect a change in the way people are conceptualizing relationships, their environment, and the world in general after the emergency and th...

Introduction: Infertility has an impact on the psychophysical health of individuals and couples, and its treatment through an assisted reproductive technology (ART) is a very exacting experience. The aim of this study was to explore the characteristics of psychological counselling services in Italian ART centres through a specially designed questi...

The Coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) pandemic posed a significant challenge to the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of each individual. It also brought the importance of daily emotional management for survival to the forefront of every human being. Our study aims to explore whether emotional processes perform different functions during waking th...

Making the life-saving treatment of transplantation available to patients who need it re-quires the cooperation of individuals and families who decide to donate organs. Healthcare workers navigate organizational, bureaucratic and relational aspects of this process, including cases in which a deceased individual has not specified a wish about organ...

The coronavirus pandemic is a unique collective event which has affected the physical and psychological health of all individuals. Restrictions imposed by governments to counteract this situation have represented risk factors for developing psychopathological symptoms. This study aims to explore the relationship between psychological symptoms and t...

The spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) became a collective trauma adversely affecting physical and psychological health. The impact of this trauma made itself manifest in a myriad of ways, including through dreams. This study aimed to explore the Referential Process (RP, Bucci, 2021) of dreams reported during quarantine. Dream samples we...

Study question What are the characteristics of the psychological services for couples undergoing ART treatment in Italy? Summary answer In the 47% of ART clinics the psychologist is a stable member of the team whereas psychological services are used by 10–20% of couples. What is known already: ART treatments are complex and emotionally demanding f...

(1) Background: The COronaVIrus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic poses a unique challenge as a severe global crisis affecting physical and psychological health. The main purpose of this work is to study the impact of a traumatic event while also observing the human ability to adapt. One of the first theories to study the adaptive importance of the...

Background: In order to promote the use of specific Italian guidelines for psychological interventions during Assisted Reproductive Treatment (ART), we conducted a preliminary analysis of the mental representations of a sample of psychologists working in ART clinics regarding their functions, roles and responsibilities as members of a multidiscipli...

The COVID-19 outbreak has placed extraordinary demands upon healthcare systems worldwide. Italy's hospitals have been among the most severely overwhelmed, and as a result, Italian healthcare workers' (HCWs) well-being has been at risk. The aim of this study is to explore the relationships between dimensions of burnout and various psychological feat...

The coronavirus pandemic represents a severe global crisis, affecting physical, and psychological health. Lockdown rules imposed to counteract the rapid growth of COVID-19, mainly social restrictions, have represented a risk factor for developing depressive and anxious symptoms. The research aims are to explore the effect of coping strategies and p...

During the COronaVIrus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Italy, general practitioners (GPs) are ensuring continued access to primary care for citizens while also absorbing more of the impact of the crisis than most professional groups. The aim of this study is to explore the relationships between dimensions of burnout and various psychological fe...

Numerosi studi hanno sottolineato l'importanza della capacità di identificare e descrivere le emozioni, come centrale rispetto al benessere psicologico in adolescenza. Sono pochi gli studi che hanno però indagato le difficoltà alessitimiche degli adolescenti, in relazione al funzionamento familiare. Nel presente studio gli autori si sono posti l'ob...

Expressive writing techniques are methods focusing on written emotional expression that require people to write about traumatic or difficult experiences, with the objective of promoting an elaboration of these events. The general aim of the study is to investigate the influence of alexithymia, a deficit in emotional regulation processes, on the eff...

Objective: We investigated whether ADHD children who are positive to Purkinje cell antibodies display pro-inflammatory activity associated with high cytokine serum levels. Method: Fifty-eight ADHD outpatients were compared with 36 healthy, age- and sex-matched children. Forty-five of the ADHD children were positive to anti-Yo antibodies, whereas 34...

Infertility is a deeply distressing experience, which can threaten important personal and martial goals, frequently affecting the psychophysical health. A supportive relationship and a secure romantic attachment appear to reduce infertility stress, as well as play a relevant role in the success of assisted reproductive technology treatments. The pr...

The association among alexithymia, somatic symptoms and clinical correlates has been scantly investigated in children. The present study examined alexithymic features and somatic symptomatology in schoolchildren with high and low levels of depression, testing the role of depressive symptoms in mediating the associations between alexithymia and soma...

The investigation of the association between alexithymia and quality of life in infertility is a relatively neglected area of research. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between alexithymia and infertility‐related quality of life in women during Assisted Reproductive Treatment. Data were collected in a clinic in Rome, 93 inferti...

Objective: World Health Organization reported that in developed countries one in four couples experience infertility with serious implications for the psychophysical well-being. Aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of Pennebaker’s writing technique on pregnancy rates, alexithymia and psychophysical health during an assisted reproductive tr...

Background and Objectives: Feeding problems occur more frequently among children with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The aim of this study was to analyse eating difficulties of ASD children through the direct observation of the caregiver-child co-regulation system. Methods: We compared 60 ASD children with a control group of 50 typically developin...

Fantasy in children is a precocious and important skill. In normal subjects some imaginative events, very close to hallucinations (perception-like experiences), have been found. Therefore, a better knowledge on both fantasy and the difference between imagination and the external world is needed. The aims of this study are: (a) to validate a new que...

Objective To evaluate the relation between alexithymia and Referential Activity (RA), a linguistic measure of the process by which non‐verbal emotional experience is connected to language. Methods The 20‐Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS‐20) and the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA) were administered to 20 postgraduate students...

Objective: To explore the impact of early-onset bipolar disorder (pediatric bipolar disorder [PBD]) on ADHD. Method: We compared ADHD symptom severity, ADHD subtype distribution, and rates of comorbid and familial psychiatric disorders between 49 ADHD children with comorbid PBD and 320 ADHD children without PBD. Results: Children with ADHD and PBD...

The aim of the present study was to explore the dimensions of alexithymia and attachment styles in a group of disordered gamblers and to evaluate the relationship between alexithymia, attachment styles, and the severity of gambling disorder. Sixty disordered gamblers diagnosed according to the diagnostic and statistical manual-5 filled out the Kurz...

Background: Inflammation may represent a common underlying mechanism in a wide range of diseases, including neuropsychiatric disorders. Cytokine involvement has been investigated in some studies on patients with childhood neuropsychiatric diseases. The aim of this study was to determine whether cytokines are involved in ADHD to provide a rationale...

Evidence in the literature indicates that psychology is regarded favorably. The public, however, appears somewhat confused about the role and functions of psychologists. This may impact upon the capacity of professionals to assist the wider community. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the presence of a psychologist in the primary car...

Background: Pennebaker's writing technique has yielded good results on health, psychological and performance dimensions. In spite of the positive outcomes, the technique has rarely been applied directly within the workplace and its effects on burnout have never been tested. Method: 18 public employees subjected to work relocation were asked to w...

l'alessitimia è definita come una difficoltà ad identificare e descrivere le proprie emozioni, caratteristiche accompagnate da un pensiero orientato ad aspetti pratici dell'esperienza e da scarse capacità immaginative. Attualmente si è proposto di utilizzare la Teoria del Codice Multiplo sviluppata da Wilma Bucci nella concettualizzazione dell'ales...

Spesso l’intervento clinico avviene o su disturbi ormai conclamati (quindi tardivamente), o attuando programmi di prevenzione in assenza di qualunque domanda, pratica di ridotta utilita e non priva di rischi. E noto d’altra parte come al - meno il 50% delle richieste che le persone rivolgono ai medici di Medicina Generale, dietro la proposta di un...

Some clinical studies on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been found to overlap those of studies on personality, particularly those on the Novelty Seeking trait (NS) as measured by the Junior Temperament and Character Inventory (JTCI). The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential role of NS in clinical research on ADHD. W...

Background: The rate with which attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is diagnosed varies widely across countries, suggesting that cultural factors influence the clinical interpretation of child behaviour. This study estimated the point prevalence of severe ADHD among elementary and middle-school Italian children. Method: An epidemiolo...

ObjectiveaaTo evaluate the presence of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Dysthymic Disorder (DD) in a sample of Italian children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and to explore specific features of comorbid depressive disorders in ADHD. MethodsaaThree hundred and sixty-six consecutive, drug-naïve Caucasian Italian outpatients...

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of written emotional disclosure as an adjunct to physiotherapy. Forty outpatients with musculoskeletal pain were treated with Mézières physiotherapy for 10 sessions. Half of the subjects also wrote about difficult life experiences immediately after four of these sessions. Data analysis showed tha...

The relationship between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional defiant and conduct disorders (ODD/CD) requires further studies. The aim was to examine the relationship among ADHD severity [assessed by ADHD Rating Scale-Parent Version (PV)], ADHD subtypes, and the comorbidity with ODD/CD in 217 Italian ADHD children. A total...

Although the relationship between alexithymia and psychopathology has been studied extensively in adults, research is lacking on alexithymia in childhood psychopathology. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between alexithymia and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The Italian version of the Alexithymia Questionn...

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An autoimmune hypothesis has been suggested for several disorders in childhood. The aim of the study was to clarify the role of the cerebellum in ADHD and to evaluate the possible association between anti-Yo antibodies and ADHD. The presence/absence of antibodies was tested by indirect immunofluorescence assay on 30 combined subtype ADHD children,...

Aim of this work was empirical assessment of the different components of couple relationship in a general population sample, through the construction and validationof an inventory composed of items based on psychoanalytic theories, the analysis of its factor structure and of the relationship of factor scores with other relevant variables.

Recent neuropsychological theories have targeted deficient executive functions (EF) as the main characteristic of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), but the nature of the neuropsychological deficits remains elusive and findings are heterogeneous. In particular, it is still unclear whether ADHD subtypes and comorbidity affect intellect...

Several studies assessed the relationship between depression and dimensions of temperament/character using the Cloninger's model of personality and the TCI-R. The aim of this study is clarify the relation between depression and personality in men and women who are expecting a baby. The Temperament and Character Inventory-Revised Form and the Beck D...

Aim: Up to today, little attention and training has been paid, in the Italian dental field, to a dramatically widespread problem, childhood abuse and neglect (CAN). Our research fits into a current of thought on alerting physicians, not only paediatricians, to the problem of abused children. Violence is often part of neglect and carelessness towar...

Though better knowledge concerning alexithymia in childhood could improve understanding of its development during the lifespan, it has been scarcely investigated in children. A necessary step in research on alexithymia is to create instruments for assessing the construct. The object of the present study was to develop an Italian Alexithymia Questio...

In the past decades, writing about traumatic events or situations has progressively obtained high status as a fast, efficient, and low-cost method of promoting health. It is increasingly being employed in new populations, notably clinical ones. However, recently a review and meta-analysis including 61 studies on different situations (Meads, 2003) c...

Based on the relevant literature, the aim of this study was to analyze the psychosocial characteristics of patients with vasovagal syncope and to evaluate these factors as possible etiopathological components. The study sample consisted of 60 subjects divided as follows: the syncope group (n = 30) and the control group (n = 30, without prominent di...