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Background Older people are the object of negative stereotypes, especially regarding their competences. As intergenerational activities are a good practice of reducing ageism, an intergenerational summer camp at the premises of a local association became a pilot study to verify whether children’s attitudes towards older people, especially those regarding competences, improved after a week of intergenerational activities. In addition, to ensure the effectiveness of this project, the impact of intergenerational activities on the well-being of older people was also investigated. Methods For this purpose, 26 children and 10 older people responded to an in-person survey on their attitudes towards older people (children) and their well-being (older people) at the beginning and at the end of their summer camp experience. As the summer camp is a weekly event, the children participated in the final survey after one week, whereas the older people, as they were volunteers for the entire summer camp, participated in the final survey after one month. Descriptive analysis and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test were performed. Results Results showed an improvement in children’s attitudes towards older people, including stereotypes about their competences, and an increase in older people’s well-being. Conclusions Findings from this study confirmed the positive effects of intergenerational projects and proposed the design of short-term ones in community settings. Future studies and considerations for intergenerational programmes suggested by this study are discussed.

Purpose Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is one of the most common forms of domestic violence, with profound implication for women's physical and psychological health. In this text we adopted the Empowerment Process Model (EPM) by Cattaneo and Goodman (Psychol Violence 5(1):84–94) to analyse interventions provided to victims of IPV by a Support Centre for Women (SCW) in Italy, and understand its contribution to women’s empowerment. Method We conducted semi-structured interviews with ten women who had been enrolled in a program for IPV survivors at a SCW in the past three years. The interviews focused on the programs’ aims, actions undertaken to reach them, and the impact on the women’s lives, and were analysed using an interpretative phenomenological approach. Results Results showed that the interventions provided by the SWC were adapted according to women's needs. In the early phases, women’s primary aim was ending violence, and the intervention by the SCW was deemed as helpful to the extent it provided psychological support, protection and safe housing. Women’s aims subsequently moved to self-actualisation and economic and personal independence which required professional training, internships, and social support. Although satisfying the majority of the women’s expectations, other important needs (e.g., economic support or legal services) were poorly addressed, and cooperation with other services (e.g., police or social services) was sometimes deemed as critical. Conclusions By evaluating a program offered by a SCW to IPV survivors through the lens of the EPM model, we found that women deemed the program as effective when both individual resources and empowerment processes were promoted. Strengths, limitations and implications are discussed.

BackgroundObesity is a highly stigmatizing condition, and reduced cognitive functioning is a stereotypical trait ascribed to individuals with obesity. In the present work, we tested the hypothesis that stereotype threat (i.e., a depletion of working memory resources due to the fear of confirming a negative self-relevant stereotype when a stereotype-related ability is assessed) contributes to cognitive deficits in individuals with obesity.MethodsComputerized tests of (a) working memory and (b) probabilistic learning—an ability unrelated with working memory—were administered to a community sample of 131 adults. Stereotype threat was manipulated by altering the alleged nature of the tasks; the tasks were alternatively labeled as intelligence tests (high stereotype threat condition), memory and learning tests (standard instructions condition), or distraction games (low stereotype threat condition).ResultsA negative relation between body mass index (BMI) and working memory emerged in both the high stereotype threat (95% CIs = −0.872, −0.175, p = 0.003) and the standard instructions conditions (95% CIs = −0.974, −0.153, p = 0.007), but not in the low stereotype threat condition (95% CIs = −0.266, 0.430, p = 0.643). No effect emerged on probabilistic learning.ConclusionStereotype threat is associated with impaired working memory of individuals with obesity. Implications for researchers and clinicians are discussed.

Purpose Obesity is a highly stigmatizing condition for both adults and children, and both obesity and stigma experiences are negatively related with health-related quality of life (HRQoL). However, the relations among these constructs have been modeled in different and sometimes inconsistent terms in past research, and have been the object of surprisingly few studies in pédiatrie populations. The present study addresses this gap by comparing, in a sample of preadolescent children, four competing models (i.e., additive, mediation, moderation, and moderated mediation models) accounting for the role of stigma experiences in the concurrent relation between body weight and HRQoL. Methods A community sample of 600 children aged 8-11 years completed the Perception of Teasing Scale to assess weight-based teasing experiences and the PedsQL 4.0 to assess HRQoL. Parent-reported height and weight were used to calculate age- and gender-adjusted zBMI. Log-likelihood test, BIC difference, and Wald test were used for model comparisons. Results The mediation model outperformed both additive and moderation models and was found to be equally informative (but more parsimonious) as compared to the moderated mediation account. The same pattern of results was replicated for both global HRQoL and domain-specific quality of life domains (i.e., physical, emotional, social, and scholastic). Conclusions The mediation model provided the best fitting and more parsimonious representation of the relations between body weight, stigma experiences, and HRQoL, meaning that an increased likelihood of experiencing weight-based teasing episodes, rather than excess weight per se, is associated with reduced quality of life in middle childhood.

Due to the negative impact cyberbullying has on adolescents’ health, there is a great attention on preventing such situations in schools. The action research approach carried out in one school will be illustrated, focusing on the methodology adopted. The meetings organized in school aimed at creating a restorative attitude among students, by using dialogue and negotiation of conflicts, recognizing the different roles of all actors involved and their different motivations, with the possibility to find common solutions and better tools to face possible episodes of cyberbullying.