Search results for "ALEXITHYMIA"
showing 10 items of 53 documents
Momentary emotion identification in female adolescents with and without anorexia nervosa.
2017
Individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) often report difficulties in identifying emotions, which have been mostly studied as an alexithymia trait. In a controlled two-day ecological momentary assessment, we studied the influence of time of day and aversive tension on self-reported momentary emotion identification. Analysis on an aggregated level revealed a significant lower mean emotion identification in the AN group. In a mixed model analysis, the AN group showed lower emotion identification than the control group (HC). Both a general and a group effect of time of day were found, indicating that emotion identification improved during the day in HC, whereas a negligible decrease of the emoti…
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 =…
The Importance of Considering Alexithymia during Initial Stages of Intimate Partner Violence Interventions to Design Adjuvant Treatments
2019
Empirical evidence supports that individuals with alexithymia might be prone to certain types of violence, such as intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW). Moreover, considering that alexithymia is directly involved in behavior regulation, problems due to identifying and regulating emotional states might be postulated as responsible, at least in part, for the success of psychotherapeutic treatments designed for decreasing the future risk of reoffending. Therefore, we assessed whether alexithymia was a good predictor of the discontinuation of treatment (dropout) and the risk of recidivism during the initial stages of intervention in a sample of men convicted of IPVAW perpetration (n …
Emotion dysregulation in hypochondriasis and depression
2017
Background The aim of this study was to explore whether certain aspects of emotion dysregulation (i.e., facets of alexithymia and rumination) are more closely linked to hypochondriasis than to depression and vice versa. Methods Nineteen patients with hypochondriasis (HYP), 33 patients with depression, and 52 healthy control participants completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, the Response Styles Questionnaire, and additional symptom and illness behaviour scales. A clinical interview was used to establish DSM-IV diagnoses and to exclude all cases with more than one axis I diagnosis. Results Depression patients reported more difficulties describing feelings and more symptom- and self-focused…
Prevalence of alexithymia in eating disorders in a clinical sample of 800 Mexican patients.
2019
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…
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…
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…
Alexithymia and Adult Attachment: Investigating the Mediating Role of Fear of Intimacy and Negative Mood Regulation Expectancies
2021
Literature suggests an association between alexithymia and insecure adult attachment, but the mediation factors involved in this relationship are under-investigated. The study was carried out to test the possible mediation roles of the fear of intimacy and negative mood regulation expectancies in explaining this relationship. A convenience sample of 258 Polish adults (mean age: 30; 45% male), completed self-reporting measures related to adult attachment (RAAS), alexithymia (TAS-20), fear of intimacy (FIS) and negative mood regulation expectancies (NMRE). The results showed that alexithymia directly and indirectly predicts insecure adult attachment. Alexithymia positively predicts the fear …
Emotional and autonomic dysregulation in abstinent alcoholic men: An idiosyncratic profile?
2019
Men who misuse alcohol tend to experience negative affect, which may entail difficulties in regulating emotions to cope effectively with stressful or anxiety-provoking situations, thus increasing the risk of alcohol relapse. This dysphoric state has been associated with alexithymia, which compromises an individual's abilities to acknowledge, recognize, and regulate emotional states. A physiological correlate of emotional regulation is autonomic flexibility, as shown by emotional dysregulation in men who misuse alcohol being correlated with reduced parasympathetic activation to control heart rate variability during stress and/or conflict situations. Hence, the main aim of this study was to i…
Theory of Mind and Emotional Awareness Deficits in Patients With Somatoform Disorders
2010
To explore whether deficits are present in the mental representation of emotion signals and whether these are related to more general deficits in Theory of Mind (ToM) functioning test. To test this hypothesis in patients suffering from somatoform disorders, we used the Frith-Happé-Animations Task (AT)-an established ToM measure. We previously demonstrated that somatization in psychiatric patients is associated with decreased emotional awareness as measured by the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS). These findings suggest that individuals with decreased emotional awareness often fail to experience affective arousal as feelings and instead experience emotional distress somatically.We …