Tommaso Boldrini

• PhD
• Assistant Professor at Pegaso Telematic University

The present study investigated the impact of childhood maltreatment experiences on parental burnout, while also examining the mediating roles of epistemic trust, mistrust, and credulity, and exploring potential differences between mothers and fathers. Utilizing a cross-sectional design, data were collected from a community sample of 948 cisgender h...

The term incel is a neologism combining “involuntary” and “celibate”, describing men who experience involuntary absence from sexual and romantic relationships. Incels frequently espouse conspiratorial and misogynistic ideologies, often engaging in verbal aggression. The present study aimed at qualitatively exploring the emotional experiences and be...

Background Eating disorders (EDs) are among the least studied mental disorders in individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR-P). The primary aim (a) of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to identify factors predicting ED diagnoses in CHR-P individuals. The secondary aim (b) was providing a comprehensive clinical description of i...

Background Defense mechanisms play a crucial role in depression and anxiety. The current study aimed at estimating the network structure of defense mechanisms in individuals with symptoms of depression and anxiety to understand the most central defenses and relevant connections. Moreover, we aimed at examining the associations between defense mecha...

Objective: This cross-sectional study aimed to identify potential predictors of poor mental health outcomes among healthcare workers in two different waves of the COVID-19 emergency in Italy. Methods: An online survey collected data from N = 557 healthcare workers (21–77 years). The study predictors were sociodemographic characteristics, occupation...

Aims To map studies assessing both clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR-P) and borderline personality disorder (BPD) in clinical samples, focusing on clinical/research/preventive paradigms and proposing informed research recommendations. Methods We conducted a PRISMA-ScR/JBI-compliant scoping review (protocol: https://osf.io/8mz7a) of primary res...

To be relevant to healthcare systems, the clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR-P) concept should denote a specific (i.e., unique) clinical population and provide useful information to guide the choice of intervention. The current study applied network analyses to examine the clinical specificities of CHR-P youths compared to general help-seekers a...

A comprehensive handbook covering current, controversial, and debated topics in psychiatric practice, aligned to the EPA Scientific Sections. All chapters been written by international experts active within their respective fields and they follow a structured template, covering updates relevant to clinical practice and research, current challenges,...

Mental health literacy (MHL) refers to lay people’s knowledge and beliefs about the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. The current study aimed at investigating MHL regarding personality disorders (PDs) multiculturally, comparing Turkish and Italian populations. In total, 262 participants responded to an online vignette identification task t...

Aims The current study aimed to validate the Italian version of the Staff Attitude to Coercion Scale (SACS), which assesses mental health care staff’s attitudes to the use of coercion in treatment. Methods The original English version of the SACS was translated into Italian, according to the back-translation procedure. Subsequently, it was empiric...

Introduction: Transference (meant in this context, as the patient relational patterns expressed towards the clinician) and therapeutic alliance play a crucial role in the treatment of personality pathology. To date, no empirical study examined the association between these two dimensions of the clinical relationship and patients’ personality malada...

Objective Youths at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR-P) are characterized by a high prevalence of anxiety and depressive disorders. The present study aimed at developing and analyzing a network structure of CHR-P symptom domains (i.e., positive, negative, disorganization, and general subclinical psychotic symptoms), depressive and anxiety symp...

Objective Disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs) represent a common motive for referral among youths. This meta-analysis aimed at estimating the efficacy of psychosocial interventions for DBD adolescents. Method A PRISMA-compliant systematic review of MEDLINE/PubMED/PsycINFO/Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials was conducted. Eligible stud...

Aims The present study investigated the relationship between suicide mortality and contact with a community mental health centre (CMHC) among the adult population in the Veneto Region (northeast Italy, population 4.9 million). Specifically, it estimated the effects of age, gender, time elapsed since the first contact with a CMHC, calendar year of d...

Aims: The COVID-19 pandemic and consequent extreme restrictions imposed by governments across the world forced psychotherapists to abruptly change their working modality. The first aim of the current study was to assess psychotherapists’ self-perceptions (i.e., affective and cognitive perceptions about their self and their self in relation to clien...

Background : Studies showed that affective temperaments and attachment are associated with depressive symptoms, and that they bi-directionally influence each-other. The aim of this study is to explore mechanisms underlying the relationship between the affective temperaments (i.e., depressive, cyclothymic, irritable, hyperthymic and anxious), interv...

Mentalizing capacities depends on the quality of primary attachment interactions with caregivers who thinks of the child as a subject with mental states. Operationalized as reflective functioning, mentalization is crucial for regulating emotions and developing of a coherent sense of identity, for interacting with individuals making sense to own and...

Aims The present investigation aimed at evaluating differences in psychiatric hospitalizations in Italy during and after the lockdown due to the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), compared to the same periods in 2018 and 2019. Methods We obtained and analyzed anonymized data on psychiatric admissions (n = 4550) from 12 general hospital psy...

Background: People suffering from mental disorders are affected by public stigma in many areas of daily life, including mental health services. Stigma among mental health professionals needs to be addressed. Aims: This study explores the path leading to attitudes toward seclusion and restraint practices among future mental health professionals, con...

Aims: Recent meta-analytic data show that approximately 40% of individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR) receive at least one personality disorder (PD) diagnosis. Personality pathology could significantly influence CHR patients' prognosis and response to treatment. We aimed at exploring the PD traits of CHR adolescents, in order to outl...

Background Family Accommodation (FA) refers to the involvement of family members (especially parents) in the compulsive behaviors of children and adolescents with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (e.g. modifying family routines or facilitating avoidance of obsessive-compulsive triggers). Many studies have examined the high prevalence of FA in this cli...

Objectives. Disruptive behaviour disorders (DBDs) are common reason for referral among children/adolescents. The present meta-analysis aims to estimate the efficacy of psychosocial treatments for adolescents with DBDs. Method. PRISMA-compliant systematic review, MEDLINE/PubMED/PsycINFO/Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, last search Apr...

Aims: Italy was one of the first countries to be significantly affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, determining a unique scenario for Italian psychotherapists to consider changing the modality in which they deliver treatment. The present study aimed at studying which factors related to psychotherapists and their clinical pr...

Background: In a longitudinal design, the present study examined: (a) the nature of attachment patterns and re- flective functioning (RF) in individuals at ultra-high risk for psychosis (UHR); (b) the association between RF and subclinical psychotic symtoms; and (c) the psychosis-predictive value of attachment patterns, RF, and the inter- action be...

Background In a longitudinal design, the present study examined: (a) the nature of attachment patterns and reflective functioning (RF) in individuals at ultra-high risk for psychosis (UHR); (b) the association between RF and subclinical psychotic symtoms; and (c) the psychosis-predictive value of attachment patterns, RF, and the interaction between...

Historically, the idea of preventing severe mental disorders by intervening in their prodromal stages was first introduced by the psychoanalyst Harry Stack Sullivan. Sullivan (1994) claimed that schizophrenia was the result of maladaptive relationships and experiences, rather than hereditary or biological factors and, as such, could be prevented. (...

Research within psychotherapy and psychopathology frameworks has been inspired by the central concept of defense mechanisms, which play a pivotal role in psychoanalysis. Defense specificities have only recently been studied systematically in the context of several clinical diagnoses. The present study aimed to explore the specificities of defense m...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00429.].

Comprehensive and careful diagnostic assessment is a crucial aspect of the clinical management of suicidal patients. The new edition of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM-2; Lingiardi & McWilliams, 2017) adds a needed perspective on symptom patterns depicted in existing taxonomies, enabling clinicians to describe and categorize personality pa...

Increasing evidence shows that personality pathology is common among patients at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis. Despite the important impact that this comorbidity might have on presenting high-risk psychopathology, psychological functioning, and transition to full psychotic disorders, the relationship between personality syndromes and CHR...

The term "pseudoneurotic schizophrenia" was introduced in 1949 by Hoch and Polatin to describe apparently neurotic patients showing formal thought disorders, emotional dysregulation, and transient psychotic symptoms. Even if this diagnostic entity is no longer included in modern diagnostic systems, its evolution is intertwined with the history of s...

The Reflective Functioning Scale (Fonagy, Target, Steele, & Steele, 1998) was developed to empirically assess the capacity to mentalize thoughts, intentions, feelings and beliefs of oneself and others in the context of attachment relationships (Jurist & Meehan, 2009). To overcome the complexity of the RF scale scoring, the Computerized Text Analysi...

Mentalization, operationalized as reflective functioning (RF), can play a crucial role in the psychological mechanisms underlying personality functioning. This study aimed to: (a) study the association between RF, personality disorders (cluster level) and functioning; (b) investigate whether RF and personality functioning are influenced by (secure...

Introduction Previous researches showed that adolescents are at high risk of suicide. Suicide is a trans-nosographic phenomenon regardless of psychiatric diagnosis. Trauma is an important risk factor for suicide and young help-seeking patients usually refer traumatic experiences, especially during childhood. Objectives The objective of this study...

Anomalous subjective experiences involving an alteration of the basic sense of self (ie, Self-disorder [SD]) are emerging as a core marker of schizophrenia spectrum disorders with potential impact on current early detection strategies as well. In this study, we wished to field-test the prevalence of SD in a clinical sample of adolescent/young adult...