Prevalence of alexithymia in eating disorders in a clinical sample of 800 Mexican patients.

The inability to identify, express feelings, and not distinguish between emotions and bodily sensations, is known as alexithymia. In 1988, it developed The Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), consists of 20 items and three factors: a) difficulty of identifying feelings and differences between feelings and bodily sensations; b) difficulty of describing feelings; and c) externally oriented thinking. It's considered that people with eating disorders have specific deficits in identify and communicate their feelings.The present study has as purpose to the instrument validation.It was a cross-sectional study and psychometric character design of a single sample, formed of 435 persons suffering eat…