Italian Validation of the Scale of Psychological Abuse in Intimate Partner Violence (EAPA-P)

Psychological and emotional forms of violence often represent a danger alarm and an important risk factor for other forms of intimate partner violence (IPV). Measuring psychological violence raises several issues of conceptualization and definition, which lead to the development of several assessment instruments; among them, the Scale of Psychological Abuse in Intimate Partner Violence (EAPA-P) showed good psychometric proprieties in a Spanish population and is used to identify which strategies are acted out to engage in psychological violence. The aim of the present study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Italian version of EAPA-P among a group of Italian-speaking women (N = 343), thus evaluating its psychometric characteristics. Based on the English translation of the original Spanish version, an 11-item form of the EAPA-P was obtained, validity has been assessed through measures of emotion dysregulation, interpersonal guilt, conflict among partners and depression, anxiety, and stress symptomatology. Moreover, differences among groups were conducted to identify the capacity of the Italian version of EAPA-P to discriminate among women reporting experiencing psychological violence (N = 179), and who don’t (N = 150). Results showed an excellent internal validity, good correlations, and a good discriminatory ability of the scale. Strengths, limitations, and practical implications of the study have been discussed according to recent literature.

A Decrease in Psycho-Emotional Health in Middle-Aged Russian Women Associated with Their Lifestyle

(1) Background: The present study is aimed to determine the predicting role of objective (lifestyle) and subjective factors of middle-aged women’s psycho-emotional health such as their relations with parents, attachment and separation types. Women who are overloaded with professional and family roles have high stress level, their indicators of psychological well-being and emotional level decrease when they have to give everyday care to their elderly parents. (2) Methods: The research sample has two empirical groups. Sample of Study 1 includes middle-aged women (n = 61) aged 38–56 (M = 48.1, SD = 3.5); sample of Study 2 includes middle-aged women (n = 85) aged 33–52 (M = 40.6, SD = 3.1): married (70.5%) and divorced (29.5%), having children of 14–28 years old; giving everyday care to elderly parents for more than 1.5 yrs. Some live separately (62.3 %), or have to cohabitate with parents (37.7%). All women evaluate their life situation as difficult and manifest signs of high psycho-emotional stress. We used methods adapted for the Russian-speaking sample: getting socio-demographic information, an interview; The scales of psychological well-being; Attachment style and Interpersonal Guilt Questionnaires (study 1); Psychological Separation Inventory, Purpose-in-Life Test, projective methods (study 2), mathematical statistics. (3) Results: A number of factors and indicators of women’s psycho-emotional health decrease in the situation of role overload have been identified. Among the factors there are four main types of women’s relationships with parents: Anxious closeness; Ambivalence of feelings; Secondary relationship with parents; Alienation, predicting of psycho-emotional health that are reducing or enhancing their personal resources. Besides, a type of separation of an adult woman from her mother predicts her level of well-being. (4) Conclusions: The study confirms that middle-aged Russian women’s psycho-emotional health depends on contextual factors (difficult role-overloaded lifestyle) and factors integrating women‘s relations towards parents, attachment, guilt and separation. Types of middle-aged women’s relationships with parents contribute to their psychoemotional health in a different way.

A Decrease in Psycho-Emotional Health in Middleaged Russian Women Associated With Their Lifestyle: Factors and Indicators

The present study is aimed to determine the predicting role of objective (lifestyle) and subjective factors of middle-aged women’s psycho-emotional health such as their attitude towards parents, attachment and separation types. Women who are overloaded with professional and family roles have high stress level, their indicators of psychological well-being and emotional level decrease when they have to give everyday care to their elderly parents. (2) Methods: Sample consists of 146 women aged 38 to 56 ( =41.1, ó=3.5), married (70.5%) and divorced (29.5%), having children of 14-28 years old; giving everyday care to elderly parents for more than 1.5 yrs. Some live separately (62.3 %), or have to cohabitate with parents (37.7%). All women evaluate their life situation as difficult and manifest signs of high psycho-emotional stress. We used methods adapted for the Russian-speaking sample: getting socio-demographic information, an interview; Attachment style and Interpersonal Guilt Questionnaires (study 1); Psychological Separation Inventory, Purpose-in-Life Test, projective methods of incomplete sentences and metaphors` analysis (study 2), mathematical statistics. (3) Results: A number of factors and indicators of women`s psycho-emotional health decrease in the situation of role overload have been identified. Among the factors there are four main types of women’s attitudes towards parents: strong (anxious), distancing, ambivalent, normative closeness, predicting low indicators of psycho-emotional health: dependence on the others` opinions and feedbacks in making decisions, a lack of meaningfulness of life; reduced sense of control over life are showing the decrease. Anxiety about future and neurotic symptoms (increased demands on oneself, irritability, reduced emotional background) distinguish these respondents. (4) Conclusions: The study confirms that middle-aged Russian women`s psycho-emotional health depends on contextual factors (difficult role-overloaded lifestyle) and factors integrating women`s attitudes towards parents, attachment and separation types. Among the most important risk factors there are a difficult life situation, conflict separation type and gilt.

Assessing internalized beliefs: Development of the Pathogenic Belief Scale

The way that people internalize adverse experiences plays an important role in the development of psychopathology. The Pathogenic Belief Scale (PBS) is intended to operationalize a transtheoretical understanding of repetitive patterns of emotion-laden beliefs that develop in childhood and continue to influence people's current experience. Using a cross-sectional survey design, we recruited a large heterogeneous sample of 246 clinic outpatients and 732 adults in the community. Besides the PBS, measures of adverse parenting experiences and common psychopathology were administered. An exploratory factor analysis of the total sample of 978 participants was conducted followed by a convergent validity analysis for the 246 clinic outpatients. The three-factor solution included “cannot rely on others,” “undeserving,” and “interpersonal guilt,” and it showed good psychometric properties, including convergent validity with the measures of adverse parenting experiences and psychopathology. The 34-item PBS offers a promising self-report measure that could help delineate and understand the pathogenic beliefs that heterogeneous samples of patients may hold. Pathogenic beliefs may be relevant to the psychotherapy process, regardless of model or theoretical context.

A Generalizable Multivariate Brain Pattern for Interpersonal Guilt

Feeling guilty when we have wronged another is a crucial aspect of prosociality, but its neurobiological bases are elusive. Although multivariate patterns of brain activity show promise for developing brain measures linked to specific emotions, it is less clear whether brain activity can be trained to detect more complex social emotional states such as guilt. Here, we identified a distributed guilt-related brain signature (GRBS) across two independent neuroimaging datasets that used interpersonal interactions to evoke guilt. This signature discriminated conditions associated with interpersonal guilt from closely matched control conditions in a cross-validated training sample (N = 24; Chinese population) and in an independent test sample (N = 19; Swiss population). However, it did not respond to observed or experienced pain, or recalled guilt. Moreover, the GRBS only exhibited weak spatial similarity with other brain signatures of social-affective processes, further indicating the specificity of the brain state it represents. These findings provide a step toward developing biological markers of social emotions, which could serve as important tools to investigate guilt-related brain processes in both healthy and clinical populations.

Coping Strategies and Personality Profile Characteristics of People Whose Parents Were Alcohol Addicts

The relevance of this research is due to the wide prevalence of addictive behavior and the insufficient knowledge of the coping strategies of patients and their families. The purpose of this research was to investigate the resource factors and coping strategies of adults with alcohol-addicted parents and to make recommendations for psychological counseling for these people. The sample consisted of 52 subjects—who were participants in a twelve-step rehabilitation program for adult people whose parents had alcohol addictions—and 50 controls. We used guilt questionnaires (“The Guilt Inventory Questionnaire”, “The Interpersonal Guilt Questionnaire”), quantitative methods for evaluating the coping strategies used by participants (“coping strategies” (Lazarus, Folkman)), and a phenomenological analysis of the interviews with the participants. The results showed that adults with alcohol-addicted parents felt guilty in situations when they took care of somebody because their own parents did not model (and teach them) caretaking behavior. People whose parents were alcohol addicts tend to avoid accepting responsibility for their lives. The resource factors of people with alcohol-addicted parents included keeping a diary, participation in a rehabilitation program, and confidential communication with other people.

A generalizable multivariate brain pattern for interpersonal guilt

Feeling guilty when we have wronged another is a crucial aspect of prosociality, but its neurobiological bases are elusive. Although multivariate patterns of brain activity show promise for developing brain measures linked to specific emotions, it is less clear whether brain activity can be trained to detect more complex social emotional states such as guilt. Here, we identified a distributed Guilt-Related Brain Signature (GRBS) across two independent neuroimaging datasets that used interpersonal interactions to evoke guilt. This signature discriminated conditions associated with interpersonal guilt from closely matched control conditions in a cross-validated training sample (N = 24; Chinese population) and in an independent test sample (N = 19; Swiss population). However, it did not respond to observed or experienced pain, or recalled guilt. Moreover, the GRBS only exhibited weak spatial similarity with other brain signatures of social affective processes, further indicating the specificity of the brain state it represents. These findings provide a step towards developing biological markers of social emotions, which could serve as important tools to investigate guilt-related brain processes in both healthy and clinical populations.