Handovers assure a timely and correct information transfer while socializing workers to the service's culture; however, no study describes them as instruments to document organizational change and only a few have focused on psychiatric settings. Aim To investigate the change in the culture of an Italian psychiatric residential care home as perceived by its mental health workers (MHWs) over the course of two decades. Method Emotional text analysis (ETA) was used to analyse the MHWs' handovers completed from 1990 to 2011. Results The analysis generated four clusters and three main factors illustrating the change in the MHWs' representations of the residential care home and its occupants. The factors showed: (1) the shift from an individualistic, problem-focused view to an inclusive, community-based approach; (2) the presence of a descriptive as well as a specialized language; and (3) the presence of a double focus: on patients and professionals. Conclusions Handovers transcripts document the following changes: (1) a shift from a symptom-based to a recovery-oriented approach; (2) a modification of the MHWs values towards an holistic view of the patient; (3) a growing importance assigned to accountability, services integration and teamwork. The paper shows that handovers can be used diachronically to document organizational change.
Abstract. This single case study aimed at evaluating the use of a photographic technique (i.e., Spectro Cards) within an eight-session clinical intervention based on the Brief, Intermittent Psychotherapy model developed by Nicholas Cummings (1990). We hypothesized that the use of photography may increase the patient's Referential Activity (RA), facilitating the linking process between the nonverbal experience and the verbal code. Linguistic analysis of the discursive production of a 36-year-old female patient was conducted according to two different strategies: Measurement of the RA according to the coding system developed by Wilma Bucci (1997aBucci ( , 1997b, and textual-linguistic analysis supported by the software T-LAB. Our findings revealed that the use of Spectro Cards during each psychotherapeutic session yielded significant changes in the patient's language, in terms of greater RA values, richer discursive production, and a switch of language focus from physical pain to psychological pain.
The majority of empirical research on psychopathy involves forensic populations; however, researchers have recently turned their atention to the nature and implications of psychopathic features in the workplace, hence shedding light on the notion of "workplace psychopaths." Nowadays, many studies deal with successful people having a psychopathic outlook in a work environment. This is a contemporary phenomenon, originated during the 1990s. In this period, changing nature of work and business has created a general state of confusion due to increasing instability and competitiveness. In this social context, psychopathic personality aspects, such as the appearance of calm, conidence and other psychopathic tendencies, are mistaken for "leadership qualities."This contemporary phenomenon is dangerous and connected to psychosocial risks: the social and environmental contexts are afected by this dynamic, which can for instance lead to increasing anxiety in the co-workers and lack of motivation. This afects not only workers, but also companies: results of recent researches show the signiicant inluence of psychopaths on organizational commitment. These dynamics stimulated the interest of researchers in a variety of disciplines: psychiatry, as well as psychology, criminology, and sociology. This chapter aims at reviewing the current knowledge on this phenomenon, and to promote prevention and diagnosis.
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