Healthcare professionals are at higher risk of developing and experiencing burnout. Parents may also suffer from prolonged stressful conditions that lead to physical and emotional exhaustion. Residential youth care workers assume a caregiving role that can lead to persistent stressful conditions that affect their relationship with the youth. In addition, the COVID-19 lockdown has had a negative impact on both the organization and the work, as well as on the lifestyle of workers and minors. In fact, during the pandemic, contact with families was not possible due to restrictions and this increased the need for caregivers to assume a parental role. This research aims to examine the risk of burnout in a sample of 75 healthcare professionals working with youths and the association with psychological traits. Then, we aim to evaluate these aspects during the COVID-19 lockdown The measurements, conducted in both February 2019 and April 2021, included six questionnaires: MBI to assess burnout, TAS_20 to explore alexithymic traits, COPE_NVI to assess coping strategies, FDS_R to quantify frustration intolerance at work, IRI for empathy, and FFMQ to investigate awareness and emotional regulation. Our sample shows a medium-high risk of developing burnout, which worsened during the pandemic. A worsening of emotional skills, paralleled by a greater empathic investment required by the emergency situation, and an assumed parental role is observable. Coping strategies correlate with burnout risk, as avoidance strategies were strongly associated with emotional exhaustion. These findings suggest an urgent need to develop targeted and timely interventions for healthcare professionals in order to prevent long-term consequences.

Neuron‐restrictive silencer factor/repressor element 1 (RE1)‐silencing transcription factor (NRSF/REST) is a transcriptional repressor of a large cluster of neural genes containing RE1 motifs in their promoter region. NRSF/REST is ubiquitously expressed in non‐neuronal cells, including astrocytes, while it is down‐regulated during neuronal differentiation. While neuronal NRSF/REST homeostatically regulates intrinsic excitability and synaptic transmission, the role of the high NRSF/REST expression levels in the homeostatic functions of astrocytes is poorly understood. Here, we investigated the functional consequences of NRSF/REST deletion in primary cortical astrocytes derived from NRSF/REST conditional knockout mice (KO). We found that NRSF/REST KO astrocyte displayed a markedly reduced activity of inward rectifying K+ channels subtype 4.1 (Kir4.1) underlying spatial K+ buffering that was associated with a decreased expression and activity of the glutamate transporter‐1 (GLT‐1) responsible for glutamate uptake by astrocytes. The effects of the impaired astrocyte homeostatic functions on neuronal activity were investigated by co‐culturing wild‐type hippocampal neurons with NRSF/REST KO astrocytes. Interestingly, neurons experienced increased neuronal excitability at high firing rates associated with decrease after hyperpolarization and increased amplitude of excitatory postsynaptic currents. The data indicate that astrocytic NRSF/REST directly participates in neural circuit homeostasis by regulating intrinsic excitability and excitatory transmission and that dysfunctions of NRSF/REST expression in astrocytes may contribute to the pathogenesis of neurological disorders.

The main aim of the study was to map the psychological functioning of individuals with adverse childhood experiences, with the objective to characterize developmental trajectories. Specifically, we investigated the relations among three of the seven domains of impairment in children and adolescents who had been exposed to complex trauma. To this end, we tested a mediation model with emotional dysregulation as the independent variable, intelligence as the dependent variable, and dissociation as the mediator. The research sample was composed of 64 participants (10–19 years old); 31 adolescents formed the clinical group and 33 the non-clinical group; for the clinical group, we recruited adolescents who were residents of therapeutic communities and had a history of complex trauma. Both groups completed the Difficulties in emotion regulation scale (DERS), Adolescent dissociative experience scale (A-DES), Trauma symptom checklist for children (TSCC), and Wechsler scales. The data analysis yielded significant results for the control group only. We suggest that healthy adolescents adopt a non-pathological dissociative cognitive style in response to increased emotional dysregulation, thus explaining their enhanced cognitive performance.