Investigating Functioning Profile of Adolescents with Anorexia before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study on Mentalizing, Alexithymia, and Impulsiveness.

Anorexia nervosa (AN) usually emerges in adolescence when important changes occur in cognitive, emotional, and social processes. Mentalizing, alexithymia, and impulsiveness represent key dimensions for the understanding and interpretation of psychological difficulties in AN. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted adolescents with AN, showing a worsening of the disease. The main aims of the present paper are (1) to compare adolescents with AN before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) to explore the relationship between mentalizing, alexithymia, impulsiveness, and psychological difficulties related to eating disorders in adolescents with AN during the COVID-19 pandemic. One hundred and ninety-six AN female adolescents (N = 94 before COVID-19; N = 102 during COVID-19) participated in this study. The results show that adolescents with AN during the COVID-19 pandemic had a more impaired functioning profile than the before COVID-19 group. Mentalizing, alexithymia, and impulsiveness had a predictive role on psychological difficulties related to eating disorders in adolescents with AN during the COVID-19 pandemic. In conclusion, our data reveal that the COVID-19 pandemic has likely represented a stress condition that affects mental health; worsening the severity of adolescents with AN clinical condition. Lastly, predictive patterns suggest the existence of a link between difficulties in the ability to face the problems of the present time using effective strategies and the severity of psychological symptoms.

Emerging adults facing the COVID-19 pandemic: emotion dysregulation, mentalizing, and psychological symptoms

Settled in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the present short-term longitudinal study aims to investigate the relation between emotion dysregulation, mentalizing (both certainty and uncertainty about mental states), and psychological symptoms in a sample of 83 emerging adults (Mage = 22.18 years, SD = 4.36) over a continuous period started with COVID-19 spreads. Results display significant positive associations between psychological symptoms and both emotion dysregulation and uncertainty about mental states, while an inverse association with certainty about mental states was found. A moderation model was also performed, showing a significant negative association between emotion dysregulation and psychological symptoms at low levels of uncertainty about mental states. Conversely, a marginally significant positive association occurs at high levels of uncertainty about mental states. In other words, the presence of individual impairments in perceiving one’s own/others mind may increase the negative consequences of emotion dysregulation on reported psychological symptoms. To sum up, our findings highlight the importance of considering mentalizing as a possible key factor for the promotion of emerging adults’ mental health also in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Can Open Source Hardware Mechanical Ventilator (OSH-MVs) initiatives help cope with the COVID-19 health crisis? Taxonomy and state of the art.

The field of Open Source Hardware Mechanical Ventilators (OSH-MVs) has seen a steep rise of contributions during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. As predictions showed that the number of patients would exceed current supply of hospital-grade ventilators, a number of formal (academia, the industry and governments) and informal (fablabs and startups) entities raced to develop cheap, easy-to-fabricate mechanical ventilators. The presence of actors with very diverse modus operandi as well as the speed at which the field has grown, led to a fragmented design space characterized by a lack of clear design patterns, projects not meeting the minimum functional requirements or showing little-to-no innovation; but also valid alternatives to hospital-grade devices. In this paper we provide a taxonomic system to help researchers with no background in biomedical engineering to read, understand and contribute to the OSH-MV field. The taxonomy is composed of ten properties that are read through the lenses of three reflection criteria: buildability, adoptability and scalability. We applied the taxonomy to the analysis of seventeen OSH-MV projects, which are representative of the current landscape of possibilities available for COVID-19 patients. We discuss the different design choices adopted by each project highlighting strengths and weaknesses and we suggest possible directions for the development of the OSH-MV field.