Mentalizing, Resilience, and Mental Health Status among Healthcare Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented stress on healthcare professionals worldwide. Since resilience and mentalizing capacity play very important preventive roles when it comes to mental health, the main goal of this study was to determine whether the capacity for mentalizing and resilience could explain the levels of depression, anxiety, and stress among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was conducted in Serbia on a sample of 406 healthcare workers (141 doctors and 265 nurses) aged 19 to 65 (M = 40.11, SD = 9.41). The participants' mental health status was evaluated using the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale-DASS-42. The Reflective Functioning Questionnaire was used to evaluate the capacity for mentalizing. Resilience was assessed using the Brief Resilience Scale. The results of the correlation analysis showed that there were negative correlations between resilience and all three dimensions of mental health status: depression, anxiety, and stress. Hypermentalizing was negatively correlated with depression, anxiety, and stress, while hypomentalizing was positively correlated. Hierarchical linear regression analysis showed that both resilience and hypermentalizing were significant negative predictors of depression, anxiety, and stress, and that hypomentalizing was a significant positive predictor of depression, anxiety, and stress. Furthermore, socioeconomic status was a significant negative predictor of depression, anxiety, and stress. Marital status, number of children, and work environment were not statistically significant predictors of any of the three dimensions of mental health status among the healthcare workers in this study. There is an urgent need to establish and implement strategies to foster resilience and enhance the capacity for mentalizing among healthcare workers in order to minimize the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health.

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.

[Mentalizing as Psychosocial Vaccination in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy]. / Mentalisieren als psychosoziale Impfung in der Kinder- und Jugendlichenpsychotherapie.

Based on the psychological stress caused by theCovid 19 pandemic in families, this article explores the fundamental question of how the psychological process of mentalizing - metaphorically speaking - can act as a psychosocial vaccination in stressful times. To this end, we look at the developments in the psychosocial context under the conditions of the pandemic and consider the effects on child and adolescent psychotherapy on the basis of a vignette of a group therapy session.

Teachers during the COVID-19 Era: The Mediation Role Played by Mentalizing Ability on the Relationship between Depressive Symptoms, Anxious Trait, and Job Burnout.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 outbreak caused severe changes in school activities over the past two years. Teachers underwent a re-planning of their teaching approaches, shifting from face-to-face teaching formats to remote ones. These challenges resulted in high levels of burnout. The identification of risk/protective factors contributing to burnout is crucial in order to inform intervention programs. Thus, we hypothesized a mediation role of teachers' mentalizing ability (processing of emotions, a component of mentalized affectivity) on the relationship between depression, anxiety, and depersonalization (burnout dimension). Two reverse models were computed. Job satisfaction, teachers' age and gender, school grade, and length of teaching experience served as covariates. METHODS: 466 (M(sd) = 46.2 (10.4) years) online questionnaires were completed by Italian teachers of primary (n = 204) and middle (n = 242) schools. Measures of burnout, depression, anxiety, and mentalization were administered. RESULTS: The findings corroborated our hypotheses: in all models, processing emotions served as a mediator on the relationship between depression, anxiety, and depersonalization, and on the reciprocal one. Job satisfaction positively impacted processing emotion, and negatively impacted depression and depersonalization; women teachers reported high levels of the anxious trait. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, it can be concluded that the ability to mentalize has a beneficial impact on teachers' well-being. Policymaking, clinical, and research implications were discussed.

Personality, Defenses, Mentalization, and Epistemic Trust Related to Pandemic Containment Strategies and the COVID-19 Vaccine: A Sequential Mediation Model.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has considerably influenced all domains of people's lives worldwide, determining a high increase in overall psychological distress and several clinical conditions. The study attempted to shed light on the relationship between the strategies adopted to manage the pandemic, vaccine hesitancy, and distinct features of personality and mental functioning. METHODS: The sample consisted of 367 Italian individuals (68.1% women, 31.9% men; M age = 37, SD = 12.79) who completed an online survey, including an instrument assessing four response styles to the pandemic and lockdown(s), the Personality Inventory for DSM-5-Brief Form, the Defense Mechanisms Rating Scales-Self-Report-30, the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire, and the Epistemic Trust, Mistrust, Credulity Questionnaire. RESULTS: Maladaptive response patterns to pandemic restrictions were related to dysfunctional personality traits, immature defense mechanisms, poor mentalization, and epistemic mistrust or credulity. Moreover, more severe levels of personality pathology were predictive of an extraverted-maladaptive response style to health emergency through the full mediation of low overall defensive functioning, poor certainty of others' mental states, and high epistemic credulity. CONCLUSIONS: Recognizing and understanding dysfunctional psychological pathways associated with individuals' difficulties in dealing with the pandemic are crucial for developing tailored mental-health interventions and promoting best practices in healthcare services.

Resilience, Mentalizing and Burnout Syndrome among Healthcare Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Serbia.

The aim of this study was to examine whether the capacity for mentalizing and resilience among healthcare workers (HCWs) explains the degree of burnout syndrome during the COVID-19 pandemic in Serbia. The research was conducted on a sample of 406 healthcare workers (141 doctors and 265 nurses), aged 19 to 65 years (M = 40.11, SD = 9.41)-203 worked on the COVID-19 frontline, and 203 in regular clinical conditions. The Maslach Burnout Inventory was used to measure the burnout syndrome. Capacity for mentalizing was examined using the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire. The Brief Resilience Scale was used to measure resilience. The results indicated that there were negative correlations between resilience and the dimensions of burnout-emotional exhaustion (r = -0.38; p < 0.01) and depersonalization (r = -0.11; p < 0.05), and a positive correlation between resilience and personal accomplishment (r = 0.27; p < 0.01), as was expected. The analyses of hierarchical linear regression showed that hypomentalizing was a significant positive predictor of emotional exhaustion (ß = 0.12; p < 005) and depersonalization (ß = 0.15; p < 0.05), resilience was a significant negative predictor of emotional exhaustion (ß = -0.28, p < 0.01) and positive predictor of personal accomplishment (ß = 0.20; p < 0.01), and that the degree of explained variance of burnout dimensions was higher when resilience and hypomentalizing were included in regression models, in addition to sociodemographic variables. The findings suggest that being a woman and working on the COVID-19 frontline implies a higher burnout, while the level of burnout decreases with better socioeconomic status and more children. Resilience, capacity for mentalizing, and burnout syndrome among HCWs are interrelated phenomena, which have important professional implications.