Chronic diseases such as childhood diabetes mellitus constitute a challenge for both the affected children and their families. Childhood diabetes mellitus is characterized by complex therapeutic management and has a profound physical and psychological impact on the whole family and a number of losses for the parents.

To recognize and quantify the factors affecting shame feelings for parents of children with diabetes mellitus.

A cross-sectional design was performed. A sample of 316 parents (110 men–206 women, mean age 40.6 years, SD = 6.0 ranged 17–57) participated to the present study. The questionnaire included: (a) social-demographic characteristics, (b) The Other As Shamer Scale (OAS), (c) The Experience of Shame Scale (ESS). SPSS for Windows 20.0 was used for the statistical analysis.

Age and the place of residence of the parents, the duration and the severity of disease were identified as significant multivariate factors on internal and external shame.

Feeling of shame consist a significant psychological burden of the parents with children suffering from diabetes mellitus. Screening for psychological distress in parents of children is indicated, and preventive interventions are needed, targeted according to the increased needs as suggested in the research results.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

Psilocybin is a classic psychedelic drug that has a history of use in psychotherapy. One of the rationales for its use was that it aids emotional insight by lowering psychological defences.

To test the hypothesis that psilocybin facilitates access to personal memories and emotions by comparing subjective and neural responses to positive autobiographical memories under psilocybin and placebo.

Ten healthy participants received two functional magnetic resonance imaging scans (2mg intravenous psilocybin v. intravenous saline), separated by approximately 7 days, during which they viewed two different sets of 15 positive autobiographical memory cues. Participants viewed each cue for 6 s and then closed their eyes for 16 s and imagined re-experiencing the event. Activations during this recollection period were compared with an equivalent period of eyes-closed rest. We split the recollection period into an early phase (first 8 s) and a late phase (last 8 s) for analysis.

Robust activations to the memories were seen in limbic and striatal regions in the early phase and the medial prefrontal cortex in the late phase in both conditions (P<0.001, whole brain cluster correction), but there were additional visual and other sensory cortical activations in the late phase under psilocybin that were absent under placebo. Ratings of memory vividness and visual imagery were significantly higher after psilocybin (P<0.05) and there was a significant positive correlation between vividness and subjective wellbeing at follow-up (P<0.01).

Evidence that psilocybin enhances autobiographical recollection implies that it may be useful in psychotherapy either as a tool to facilitate the recall of salient memories or to reverse negative cognitive biases.