BACKGROUND:Although non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) disorder is highly prevalent in adolescents, its relationship with pain system function and suicidality is still controversial. The present study was designed to assess the function of the nociceptive afferent pathways and the endogenous pain modulation in adolescent patients with NSSI and to longitudinally register any suicide attempt, describe its frequency and find a possible association between suicide, neurophysiological measures and psychological measures.METHODS:We enrolled 30 adolescents suffering from NSSI and 20 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. Patients underwent a comprehensive psychological evaluation. Each participant underwent thermal pain thresholds of the quantitative sensory testing, laser-evoked potential recording to study the ascending nociceptive pathway and the conditioned pain modulation testing to test the endogenous pain modulation.RESULTS:We found that patients with NSSI had a reduced amplitude of the N2 component of laser-evoked potentials and an abnormal conditioned pain modulation. The amplitude of the N2 was associated with suicidal risk.CONCLUSIONS:The deficit of the endogenous pain modulation likely depends on a saturation due to continuous pain solicitation. The strong association of a reduced amplitude of the N2 component with suicide suggests that it may serve as a possible biomarker in self-harming adolescents.SIGNIFICANCE:The present study identifies the N2 component of laser-evoked potentials as a possible neurophysiological biomarker of suicidal risk in patients with non-suicidal self-injury, therefore, raising the possibility for a non-invasive test to identify subjects at higher risk of suicide among self-harming patients.

Introduction: The last decade has witnessed a resurgence of interest in the clinician’s subjectivity and its role in the diagnostic assessment. Integrating the criteriological, third-person approach to patient evaluation and psychiatric diagnosis with other approaches that take into account the patient’s subjective and intersubjective experience may bear particular importance in the assessment of very young patients. The ACSE (Assessment of Clinician’s Subjective Experience) instrument may provide a practical way to probe the intersubjective field of the clinical examination; however, its reliability and validity in child and adolescent psychiatrists seeing very young patients is still to be determined. Methods: Thirty-three clinicians and 278 first-contact patients aged 12–17 years participated in this study. The clinicians completed the ACSE instrument and the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale after seeing the patient, and the Profile of Mood State (POMS) just before seeing the patient and immediately after. The ACSE was completed again for 45 patients over a short (1–4 days) retest interval. Results: All ACSE scales showed high internal consistency and moderate to high temporal stability. Also, they displayed meaningful correlations with the changes in conceptually related POMS scales during the clinical examination. Discussion: The findings corroborate and extend previous work on adult patients and suggest that the ACSE provides a valid and reliable measure of the clinician’s subjective experience in adolescent psychiatric practice, too. The instrument may prove to be useful to help identify patients in the early stages of psychosis, in whom subtle alterations of being with others may be the only detectable sign. Future studies are needed to determine the feasibility and usefulness of integrating the ACSE within current approaches to the evaluation of at-risk mental states.

The aim of the present study was to review international data present in scientific literature about the development and psychological well-being of children of same-sex couples and to highlight the legal situation of these families in Italy, now that the European Union is requiring their legal recognition. The results of a revision of the literature published in the last 30 years demonstrate that there are no statistically significant differences between children raised by same-sex and heterosexual couples when it comes to their development profile. Studies focusing on the relationships with parents and peers, psycho-socioemotional welfare and cognitive development, school proficiency, sexual orientation and gender identity of children of same-sex couples are reviewed. Methodological weaknesses are presented, with suggestions for further research into this area.