Alberto D'Argenio

Research has indicated that medical doctors and paramedics are at higher risk of being stalked than the general population. In particular, mental health care professionals alone represent one third of the victims of harassment. Because of the lack of studies in this specific sector, especially in Italy, in this study, we examined the stalking of psychiatrists by their patients, considering gender differences and the incidence of stalking in private practice and public mental health clinics in Rome. We found that the rate of stalking in private mental health settings is higher than that in public settings and that the perpetrators of stalking are mainly women who mostly target mental health professionals working in private practice. Implications of the findings are noted and discussed.

Among the extensive results supplied by the psychiatric literature on the subject of stalking, few studies focus on the analysis of persecutory behaviors carried out against mental health professionals, who also identified as one of the most affected sample of victims. Particularly, for studies conducted in this way, further examination requires differentiation according to gender type into the social and personal characteristics of the authors' behavior patterns displayed towards the victims. Aim. To obtaine results by an epidemiological survey conducted in public and private psychiatric care structures in the city of Rome, to assess the incidence of the phenomenon as well as gender differences in behavior patterns practised out by the author for the two sample considered. Methods. Administration of a questionnaire to a sample make up by psychiatrists working in out-patient services for the Departments of Mental Health (ASL) of Rome and to a sample of psychiatrists who practise...

Epidemiological, clinical, and experimental studies have linked low or lowered cholesterol levels to aggressive behavior. However, no study has measured the relationship between aggression and apolipoprotein A-I/apolipoprotein B ratio, a robust indicator of cardiac risk. Plasma levels of total cholesterol, HDL-C, LDL-C, triglycerides, apolipoprotein A-I, and apolipoprotein B were measured and correlated with Aggression Questionnaire ratings in 20 young adult males with personality disorders and/or a high propensity toward aggressive behavior and in 40 control subjects. Compared with the control subjects, the subjects in the aggressive group had lower levels of apo A-I and a lower apo A-I/apo B ratio. Whereas in the control subjects, higher levels of aggression were correlated with lower levels of atherogenic lipoproteins (LDL-C and apo B), in the aggressive subjects higher levels of aggression were correlated with lower levels of anti-atherogenic lipoproteins (HDL-C and apo A-I) and higher levels of LDL-C. The results of this study confirm the existence of a relationship between blood lipids and aggressive behavior in young adult males and suggest that the apo A-I/apo B ratio might be an additional marker in the search for biological correlates of increased risk of violence.

According to attachment theorists, affect regulation and quality of attachment are closely linked. As a personality trait associated with deficits in the cognitive processing and regulation of affects, alexithymia has been hypothesized to correlate with insecure attachment. To test this hypothesis, we studied the relationships between alexithymia, adult attachment style, and retrospective memories of separation anxiety symptoms during childhood in 100 young men with clinically significant mood symptoms. The most common DSM-IV diagnosis (N = 72) was adjustment disorder with depressed mood, with anxiety, or with mixed anxiety and depressed mood. Each participant completed the Twenty-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the state form of the State-Trait Anxiety Index (STAI), the Attachment Style Questionnaire (ASQ), the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ), and the Separation Anxiety Symptom Inventory (SASI). Alexithymic traits were more pronounced in those participants who had patterns of insecure attachment and who reported more severe symptoms of separation anxiety during childhood, independently of the severity of their current anxiety and depressive symptoms. Among the subgroup of participants with insecure attachment styles, those with preoccupied or fearful patterns had a higher prevalence of alexithymia (65% and 73%, respectively) than those with a dismissing pattern (36%). These data suggest a role for early developmental factors in the etiology of alexithymia