Research Article Health Care Professionals’ Knowledge of Stalking Perpetrators, Victims, Behaviors, and Coping Strategies: A Preliminary Study among Italian Hospitals Daniela Acquadro Maran , 1 Barbara Loera, 2 and Alberto D’Argenio 3 1 Work and Organizational Well-being Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Torino, Via Verdi 10-10124 Torino, Turin, Italy 2 Department of Psychology, University of Torino, Via Verdi 10-10124, Turin, Italy 3 Policlinico Tor Vergata, Viale Oxford, 81-00133 Rome, Italy Correspondence should be addressed to Daniela Acquadro Maran; daniela.acquadro@unito.it Received 27 June 2019; Revised 19 September 2019; Accepted 24 September 2019; Published 13 October 2019 Academic Editor: Stuart Bauer Copyright © 2019 Daniela Acquadro Maran et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. e aim of this study was to investigate health care professionals’ level of in-depth understanding about the various types and characteristics of stalking. In particular, the study examines knowledge on the characteristics of stalkers and their victims, acted behaviors, and coping strategies used to stop the harassment. e data were collected by means of an adhoc questionnaire. e sample comprised 210 participants working in local health units in Turin, a large city located in the northern part of Italy. e majority were women (160, 76.2%). e participants were aged 20–64 years, and the mean age was 41.63 years (SD � 11.18). e majority of participants were psychologists (99, 47.1%), 31 (14.8%) were nurses, 31 (14.8%) had an unspecified medical profession, 29 (13.8%) were psychiatrists, and 20 (9.5%) were general practitioners. According to the findings, interventions with male victims of stalking, especially when the stalker is a woman, require attention in particular. Underestimating the stalking experience is a risk, so health care professionals in their interventions must explain to the men the emotive and physical consequences of the victimization. Moreover, in suggesting coping strategies, health care professionals must consider the victim’s fear of reporting the incident not only to law enforcement authorities but also to family and friends. e findings showed that health care professionals need a better understanding of the stalking phenomenon. Education courses are a valuable tool to identify characteristics of the phenomenon, validate existing knowledge, and decrease the level of missing information to develop the skills needed to take appropriate action in cases of stalking. 1. Introduction e term stalking is used to indicate a constellation of be- haviors in which one individual persistently inflicts repeated, unwanted intrusions and communications on another person [1]. Stalking, which is characterized by intrusive acts (e.g., threatening, following, spying, receiving unwanted calls, and e-mails), creates a sense of loss of control in the victim, which might lead the victim to believe that he/she is living in an unsafe environment [2]. e consequences for the victim include physical, emotional, and social ramifi- cations on well-being and quality of life [3, 4]. Victims live in a state of continuous threat even when the behavior is not marked by an explicit threat or by physical violence [5, 6]. One of the recommended strategies to reduce the impact of stalking on the life of the victim is to approach a health care professional (HCP) [7], with whom a relationship may facilitate the victim in clarifying, leading him/her to adopt more effective coping strategies, such as assertive commu- nication when direct confrontation with the stalker is rec- ommended. As reported by Kamphuis and his colleagues [8], the intervention of professionals in stalking cases is often based on their knowledge of the phenomenon. In some cases, the stalking campaign may be assessed as “merely a Hindawi e Scientific World Journal Volume 2019, Article ID 9190431, 9 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/9190431