Search results for "ALEXITHYMIA"

Biased emotional recognition in depression: perception of emotions in music by depressed patients.

2010

Abstract Background Depression is a highly prevalent mood disorder, that impairs a person's social skills and also their quality of life. Populations affected with depression also suffer from a higher mortality rate. Depression affects person's ability to recognize emotions. We designed a novel experiment to test the hypothesis that depressed patients show a judgment bias towards negative emotions. Methods To investigate how depressed patients differ in their perception of emotions conveyed by musical examples, both healthy (n = 30) and depressed (n = 79) participants were presented with a set of 30 musical excerpts, representing one of five basic target emotions, and asked to rate each exc…

Alexithymia and coping style in women going to visit in a breast cancer center.

2007

Alexithymia, burden and resilience in ALS’ caregivers

2017

Living with a progressively disease such as Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has a strong impact on the people affected and on their relatives, who have to tackle the demanding duties of caring for and assisting them (Tramonti et al., 2014). Many factors modulate the levels of burden in ALS’ caregivers: disease related factors, personality related factors, enviromental factors. Dennison et al (2001) showed that alexithymia could to contribute to increasing distress in ALS’ caregivers, but there are very few studies on this. Other studies supporting the role of resilience such as protective factor (Ripamonti, 2015). The aim of the study is to assess the relationship between alexithymia, r…

Interoception moderates the relation between alexithymia and risky-choices in a framing task: A proposal of two-stage model of decision-making.

2021

Decision-making depends on the context (frame) in which questions and alternatives are presented. Moreover, research has showed that the ability to detect bodily sensations (interoception) and being able to attribute these changes to emotions correctly (alexithymia) influence how we make decisions. The aim of the present research was to study how interoception and alexithymia might affect the Framing effect (FE), a cognitive bias closely related to emotional system. 42 healthy participants completed the Risky-choice Framing task and their interoception and alexithymia levels were measured. Results showed that the participants were more risk-taking under the negative frames in comparison to …

PATHOLOGICAL GAMBLING: AN ASSOCIATION WITH ALEXITHYMIA, PERSONALITY DISORDERS AND CLINICAL SYNDROMES

2014

Pathological gambling (PG) is a disorder recently conceptualized as a behavioural addiction, because of its neurobiological, neurophysiological and psychological features (American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders - 5th ed., 2013; Potenza et al., 2012). PG represents both a social and a sanitary cost, in terms of pharmacological and psychological therapies. The aim of this study was to examine the correlation between personality disorders, clinical syndromes and alexithymia levels in a group of pathological gamblers. Furthermore this study aimed at highlighting a relationship between PG and alexithymia, over and above the relationship between pe…

Longitudinal study of alexithymia and multiple sclerosis

2013

Objective The aim of this study was to investigate the course of alexithymia and its relation with anxiety and depression in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), over a period of 5 years. Methods Sixty-two MS patients were examined at two timepoints, 5 years apart, and they answered questionnaires collecting socio-demographic, medical, and psychological data (depression, anxiety, alexithymia). Results Our data show that emotional disorders remain stable over time in patients with MS, particularly as regards alexithymia and anxiety. Conversely, the rate of depression decreased between the two evaluations, falling from 40% to 26%. The two dimensions of alexithymia (i.e., difficulty describi…

Alexithymic characteristics in pediatric patients with primary headache: a comparison between migraine and tension-type headache

2015

Background: Alexithymia is a personality construct characterized by difficulties in verbal emotional expression and a limited ability to use one’s imagination. Evidence of alexithymic characteristics was found in adults suffering from headache, while little is known about children. The aim of this study was to establish the prevalence of alexithymia in two different subgroups of children and adolescents suffering from primary headache. We also looked for correlation between alexithymia in children and in their mothers. Methods: This study involved 89 participants: 47 (11 males, 36 females, aged 8 to 17 years) suffering from tension-type headache (TTH), and 42 (18 males, 24 females, aged 8 t…

Emotional expression and coping style in female breast cancer.

2007

Background: The study of the relationship of emotional status and tumor etiology has been investigated in order to elaborate a multifactorial model able to provide an answer integrating the different disciplines on cancer. The aim of this work is to investigate the knowledge on the alexithymia construct, exploring the presence of such trait in women affected by mammary carcinoma and analyzing the used coping strategies. The study has also examined personal thoughts related to event control (locus of control). Method: The Toronto Alexithymia Scale, Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced, and Locus of Control questionnaires were administered to a group of 86 women aged 31-55 years (mean =…

Functional somatic complaints in pediatric age: alexithymia or anxiety and depression? An outstanding debate

2020

Recent studies suggest that just focusing on the direct relationship between emotional awareness and somatic complaints may be a simplified perspective, as functional somatic complaints are often associated with anxiety and depression symptoms, increased levels of stress, stronger negative affect, supporting the hypothesis that poor emotion awareness might have an impact on anxiety and depression and secondarily on somatic complaints.

Emotion Regulation and Mentalization in Somatoform Disorders

2010

Alexithymia, characterized by deficits in the awareness and differentiation of emotional states, is hypothesized as underlying somatoform disorders. Mentalization as a construct investigated in cognitive psychology is defined as the ability to refer mental states of others in order to predict their behavior. Developmental psychologists claim that the ability to represent emotions mentally is the cornerstone for the emergence of mentalizing capacity. Therefore, linking alexithymia and mentalization, it is argued that patients with somatoform disorders may not only be hampered in their ability to be consciously aware of their emotions, but may also suffer from deficits in mentalizing capacity…