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The main aim of the research is to study how youths affected by haemophilia, a congenital hemorrhagic chronic disease, make sense of their condition, with particular reference to the transition from early adolescence to early adulthood. We administered face-to-face semi-structured interviews to 20 Italian youths with haemophilia, aged 11–25 years, in on-demand treatment or prophylaxis therapy. A thematic analysis was performed with the help of software for textual data to figure out the main topics and the role of the two selected variables in the emergence of the themes (age and type of therapy). The results highlight how the experience of suffering from haemophilia is organized around five core themes (fragmented body, intimacy, family history, autonomy, dreams), that are more or less typical of some age group or kind of treatment. These results may be useful for designing appropriate and differentiated interventions for psychosocial support.

The main goal of this study was to delve deeper into the relationship between transformational leadership and better general health status among employees. Based on the Job Demands-Resources model of occupational well-being, the current research investigated the role of transformational leadership, as a job resource, in fostering individual hardiness, as a personal resource, which may in turn result in higher levels of work engagement and, consequently, better general health status among employees. Data were collected from 358 white-collar employees in an Italian company. Most of them were women (52.9%) with a mean age of 44.42 years (SD = 9.22). To evaluate the hypothesis of a mediating role of employees’ hardiness and work engagement within the relationship between transformational leadership and workers’ general health, a bootstrapping approach was tested using a serial mediation model. In the current sample, enhanced levels of hardiness and work engagement among employees mediated the association between perceived levels of transformational leadership and individual general health conditions. These findings corroborated the role of transformational leadership as a strategic job resource in enhancing employees’ hardiness and engagement with their work, which may in turn protect their general health status. Organizations willing to rely on a healthy workforce should implement human resource management strategies focused on leadership training capable of boosting employees’ hardiness.

Diabetes mellitus type 1 is a chronic illness that has its onset in childhood or adolescence. It is determined by the insufficient production of insulin. The main therapies consist of replacement of the lacking insulin, diet, exercise, and glycemic control. If treatment is managed by parents in childhood, adherence seems to be a difficult issue during adolescence. In order to understand the subjective experience of the illness and treatment, the present study aims to investigate the patients’ subjective perspective by addressing a group of adolescents and young adults in pediatric care. A qualitative research design was adopted with semi-structured interviews, and later software thematic analysis was performed. Six core issues were deepened: family and health-care professional’s mediation support for self-management, adherence to treatments as a boring responsibility, disclosure problems in peer relationships, difficulty in becoming autonomous in a period of socioeconomic crisis, illness as concern for the future, and seeking a normal life in daily activities. The knowledge can be useful for designing more appropriate interventions that favor the active engagement of patients.

The study illuminates the subjective experience of haemophilia in people who took part in the Haemophilia Experience, Results and Opportunities (HERO) initiative, a quali-quantitative research program aimed at exploring psychosocial issues concerning this illness around the world. Applying a bottom-up analytic process with the help of software for textual data, we investigated 19 interviews in order to describe the core themes and the latent factors of speech, to explore the role of different variables in shaping the participants’ illness experiences. The five themes detected are feeling different from others, body pain, acquisition of knowledge and resources, family history, and integration of care practices in everyday life. We illustrate how nationality, age, family situation, the use of prophylaxis or on-demand treatment, and the presence of human immunodeficiency virus or hepatitis C virus affect the experience of our participants in different ways. Findings are used to bring insights on research, clinical practice, and psychosocial support.