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Query: UMLS:C0011551 (depersonalization)
 1,117 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The purpose of this study is to examine the classic psychopathologic notion of depersonalization in the light of the Basic Symptom paradigm. A sample of 57 chronic schizophrenics was cross-sectionally assessed with the Bonn Scale for the Assessment of Basic Symptoms (BSABS) and contextually with specific scales testing positive, negative, depressive and alexithymic dimensions. In order to categorize depersonalized vs. nondepersonalized patients three specific BSABS items explicitly identifying the allo-/auto-/somatopsychic domains of depersonalization were used, according to the wernickian threefold definition. Depersonalized schizophrenics showed a semiological profile that was distinct from that of nondepersonalized schizophrenics (as regards basic, positive, depressive symptoms and alexithymia); patients with multiple co-occurring forms of depersonalization revealed higher levels of cognitive disturbance, lowering of stress threshold and greater alexithymia. Clinical and research implications are discussed.
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PMID:Depersonalization and basic symptoms in schizophrenia. 1200 44

This paper reports a study on 238 health care workers from an hospital in central Italy. We examined: 1) how some dimensions regarding perceived quality of the organizational and relational climate (social warmth and quality of working life both in the ward and in the organization) influence various indicators of burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, personal accomplishment); 2) if it was possible to improve the previous regressive models by including the personality construct, alexithymia. Controlling for age and gender, results of the hierarchical regression showed significant two-way interactions between organizational/relational climate and alexithymia in predicting emotional exhaustion (p = .005 for both the ward and the organization) and personal fulfillment (for ward, p = .020; for perceived relational climate, p = .037). Depersonalization was accounted by the main effect of alexithymia (p = .000). In conclusion, results demonstrate the need to include the alexithymia construct in models predicting the various dimensions of burnout.
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PMID:[Perception of organizational climate and burnout amongst health care workers: the role of alexithymia as a moderator]. 1903 56

Alexithymia, absorption, and cognitive failures are traits that have been implicated in dissociative psychopathology. Forty-six participants with depersonalization disorder (DPD), 21 with posttraumatic stress disorder, and 35 healthy controls completed measures of dissociation, alexithymia, absorption, cognitive failures, and childhood trauma. The DPD and posttraumatic stress disorder groups had significantly and comparably elevated absorption and cognitive failures scores. Only the DPD group had significantly elevated alexithymia scores, specifically in "difficulty identifying feelings." Regression analyses revealed that "alexithymia-difficulty identifying feelings" was predictive of both DPD diagnosis and depersonalization scores. In contrast, amnesia scores were predicted by childhood trauma and absorption. In conclusion, the link between depersonalization and alexithymia appeared to be specific rather than broadly related to early trauma or to trauma-spectrum psychopathology.
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PMID:Alexithymia, absorption, and cognitive failures in depersonalization disorder: a comparison to posttraumatic stress disorder and healthy volunteers. 1959 56

Although previous studies have indicated an association between alexithymia and burnout, they have not controlled for well-established organizational factors, depression, and coping mechanisms that could confound the relationship. This study investigated the association between alexithymia and occupational burnout. One hundred eighty-three nursing students were assessed up to 3 months before graduating from their program. Alexithymia was measured with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, occupational burnout was measured with the Maslach Burnout Inventory, work-related factors were measured with the Areas of Worklife Survey, depression was measured with Beck Depression Inventory-II, and coping strategies were measured with the COPE Dispositional Inventory. Hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that externally oriented thinking style was significantly associated with personal accomplishment and depersonalization after adjusting for depression, coping, and work-related factors. The results indicate that only a single aspect of the alexithymia construct serves as a possibly independent predisposing factor for specific burnout dimensions.
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PMID:Alexithymia and burnout in nursing students. 2412 78

Contemporary models of obsessive-compulsive disorder emphasize the importance of harm avoidance (HA) and related dysfunctional beliefs as motivators of obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in Janet's (1908) concept of incompleteness (INC) as another potentially important motivator. Contemporary investigators define INC as the sense that one's actions, intentions, or experiences have not been properly achieved. Janet defined INC more broadly to include alexithymia, depersonalization, derealization, and impaired psychological mindedness. We conducted two studies to address four issues: (a) the clinical correlates of INC; (b) whether INC and HA are distinguishable constructs; (c) whether INC predicts OC symptoms after controlling for HA; and (d) the relative merits of broad versus narrow conceptualizations of INC. Study 1 was a meta-analysis of the clinical correlates of narrowly defined INC (16 studies, N=5,940). INC was correlated with all types of OC symptoms, and was more strongly correlated with OC symptoms than with general distress. Study 2 (N=534 nonclinical participants) showed that (a) INC and HA were strongly correlated but factor analytically distinguishable; (b) INC statistically predicted all types of OC symptoms even after controlling for HA; and (c) narrow INC was most strongly correlated with OC symptoms whereas broad INC was most strongly correlated with general distress. Although the findings are limited by being correlational in nature, they support the hypothesis that INC, especially in its narrow form, is a motivator of OC symptoms.
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PMID:The sense of incompleteness as a motivator of obsessive-compulsive symptoms: an empirical analysis of concepts and correlates. 2449 Dec

Medical school students often experience emotional difficulties when handling the challenges of their formation, occasionally leading to burnout. In this study, we measured the prevalence of burnout and its relationships with perceived stress, perceived social support, and alexithymia in medical students from the largest academic medical community in Romania. A cross-sectional survey was administered to a randomized sample of 299 preclinical medical students at the University of Medicine in Bucharest. Participants completed four standardized questionnaires. In addition to the assessment of burnout prevalence, stepwise backward regression was used to establish which variables had the highest correlation to burnout components. Further, t-tests were run to assess gender-related differences. Overall, burnout prevalence was 15.05%. Perceived stress was found to be the strongest predictor of emotional exhaustion and lack of accomplishment, while the strongest predictors of depersonalization were low perceived social support (in women) and alexithymia (in men). Women appear to be more vulnerable to two of the components of burnout (emotional exhaustion and low personal accomplishment) and associate higher perceived stress and alexithymia. These results suggest that interventions addressing academic burnout could benefit from being gender-specific, with focus on key elements, such as perceived stress and alexithymia.
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PMID:Burnout and Its Relationships with Alexithymia, Stress, and Social Support among Romanian Medical Students: A Cross-Sectional Study. 2858 94

Vicarious perception refers to the ability to co-represent the experiences of others. Prior research has shown considerable inter-individual variability in vicarious perception of pain, with some experiencing conscious sensations of pain on their own body when viewing another person in pain (conscious vicarious perception/mirror-pain synaesthesia). Self-Other Theory proposes that this conscious vicarious perception may result from impairments in self-other distinction and maintaining a coherent sense of bodily self. In support of this, individuals who experience conscious vicarious perception are more susceptible to illusions of body ownership and agency. However, little work has assessed whether trait differences in bodily self-awareness are associated with conscious vicarious pain. Here we addressed this gap by examining individual difference factors related to awareness of the body, in conscious vicarious pain responders. Increased self-reported depersonalization and interoceptive sensibility was found for conscious vicarious pain responders compared with non-responders, in addition to more internally oriented thinking (associated with lower alexithymia). There were no significant differences in trait anxiety. Results indicate that maintaining a stable sense of the bodily self may be important for vicarious perception of pain, and that vicarious perception might also be enhanced by attention towards internal bodily states. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Bridging senses: novel insights from synaesthesia'.
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PMID:Atypical bodily self-awareness in vicarious pain responders. 3163 Jun 46