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Query: UMLS:C0011570 (depression)
 172,036 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The goal of this study was to further our understanding of the relationship between the ability to identify one's emotions and the kinds of emotion arousing experiences that people prefer. One hundred and eighty-six undergraduate students completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, the Beck Depression Inventory, and a questionnaire inquiring about subjects' movie preferences. Individuals who reported having difficulty identifying their emotions were more likely than those without such difficulty to prefer negatively valenced movies relative to happy movies. Individuals who had both high levels of depression and alexithymia were more likely to prefer fear-arousing rather than anger-arousing movies.
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PMID:Alexithymia and movie preferences. 841 93

Personality tests, including the Self-Rating Questionnaire for Depression (SRQ-D), the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Alexithymia Scale (MMPI-AS), and the Egogram Check List (ECL) were completed by 202 perimenopausal women with undefined complaints. Patients diagnosed as having mental disorders showed SRQ-D scores of over 16 points. Patients diagnosed as having mental disorders showed MMPI-AS scores of over 13 points, which can be estimated as alexithymia. Patients experiencing climacteric disorders and the ovarian deficiency syndrome showed slightly higher MMPI-AS scores than healthy middle-aged women. The average ECL scores of patients diagnosed as having mental disorders tended to show an N-shape pattern. The findings suggest that personality tests would be helpful for screening perimenopausal women with mental disorders who are seen at outpatient gynecology clinics.
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PMID:Clinical observation of personality characteristics of perimenopausal women with undefined complaints. 848 70

Personality characteristics in patients with long-term patellofemoral pain were compared to those of matched controls and other groups both of non-patients and of psychiatric outpatients with character disorders. Personality was described using the self-administered dependency and alexithymia scales, the Karolinska Scales of Personality and the Rorschach inkblot method. The hypothesis was that the patellofemoral pain patients would have higher levels of anxiety, depression, helplessness, aggression and alexithymic characteristics than the matched controls. There were only a few significant differences between the knee patients and the matched controls. The Rorschach measures suggested significantly greater depression, hostility and passive attitude in the knee patients as compared to the reference data. There were no indications of the hypothesised alexithymic characteristics in the knee patients. If patellofemoral pain patients do not improve as expected, referral to a pain clinic with psychological expertise could be considered.
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PMID:Personality in patients with long-term patellofemoral pain syndrome. 853 24

Alexithymia seems to share some common features with psychological constriction, a phenomenon described in suicidal individuals. Fifty suicide attempters were interviewed within 24 h after arrival at a hospital, and measures of lethality of the attempt, suicidal intent, depression and alexithymia were carried out with structured instruments. Almost all the attempters were depressive, and about half of them were also alexithymic. However, alexithymia was not more prevalent in this population than in non-suicidal depressive patients. Depression and alexithymia correlated significantly with each other, but there was no correlation between alexithymia and lethality of the suicide attempt or suicidal intent. The authors conclude that alexithymia in suicide attempters seems to be associated with depression, but not with suicidality per se. Therefore, measurement of alexithymia may not yield extra information in suicide risk assessment.
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PMID:Alexithymia in suicide attempters. 873 66

Alexithymia's link with health care utilization is unclear. Alexithymia may be overrepresented among clinical samples because of a proclivity to seek care, or alexithymia may prompt delay or avoidance of care, perhaps exacerbating illness. In 911 young adults, this study examined relationships between alexithymia (Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20; total and three factor scores) and the use of six health services during the past year: outpatient medical treatment, emergency room, hospitalization, psychotherapy, routine dental care, and nonprescription analgesics. Three potential mediators (insurance status, depression, and somatic complaints) were controlled to determine alexithymia's unique relation to utilization. The alexithymic difficulty in identifying feelings was linked to increased use of outpatient treatment, after controlling for potential mediators. Difficulty identifying feelings also was related to the use of psychotherapy and analgesics, but these relationships were accounted for by increased depression and somatic complaints, respectively. The alexithymic preference for externally oriented thinking was independently linked with the decreased use of outpatient treatment, to not having psychotherapy, and to being more likely to obtain preventive dental care. Our results may explain contradictions in the literature; separate alexithymic characteristics have different relationships with different types of health care utilization.
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PMID:Alexithymia and health care utilization. 877 17

The relationship between nonverbal behavior and emotional awareness, as measured by the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, was studied in 24 young volunteers free of medical and psychiatric disorders. Multiple regression analysis revealed that nonverbal behavior during psychiatric interview was a significant predictor of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale total score independent of situational depression and anxiety. Subjects who had difficulty identifying and describing their feelings showed a combination of poor nonverbal expressivity and frequent self-directed behavior patterns indicative of tension and anxiety. In addition, subjects with a tendency toward externally oriented thinking showed more avoidance behavior during the interview. The ethological data of this study support clinical observations, which suggest that alexithymic traits interfere with both processing of emotion and interpersonal behavior.
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PMID:Nonverbal behavior and alexithymic traits in normal subjects. Individual differences in encoding emotions. 883 47

We studied a group of 18 patients with mitral valve prolapse (MVP) and a group of 20 healthy controls. Subjects in both groups were subjected to a 1-h experimental stress exposure during which Holter-ECG monitoring was performed and was then continued for the following 24 h. MVP patients complained of significant cardiac palpitation during the stress session, but ECG examination did not reveal significant inter-group differences. However, the two groups did show statistically significant differences in some psychometric measurements (Toronto Alexithymia Scale, Anxiety Sensitivity Index, Fear Questionnaire, Beck Depression Inventory, and Harm Avoidance subscale of Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire) that underlie personality traits known to be important in the process fostering functional somatic symptoms, according to the somatosensory amplification model. As no objective signs of cardiac rhythm modification were found in MVP patients under stress, we postulate that the symptoms for which these patients were referred have a functional nature, and that there is no pathogenetic link with the underlying valvular defect.
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PMID:Cardiovascular reactivity of mitral valve prolapse patients during experimental stress exposure: evidence for a functional nature of cardiovascular symptoms. 883 59

One hundred seventy four inpatients of a psychosomatic hospital were examined with the revised version of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale TAS-R, as well as further measures of emotionality, somatization, psychopathology and personality. A significant association was found between TAS alexithymia and the number of somatoform symptoms. This association, however, disappeared when it was corrected for the possible impact of depression. The factor 1 of the TAS (ability to describe feelings to others) correlated significantly with the use of negative emotional words. Thus TAS alexithymics do not use less, but more emotional words, especially words describing negative feelings. The validity of factor 2 (externally oriented thinking) seems to be low. TAS alexithymia may measure specific aspects of depression or general distress.
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PMID:What does the Toronto Alexithymia Scale TAS-R measure? 884 78

A decreased sensitivity to painful stimuli and high scores for alexithymia and depression have been observed in patients with eating disorders. We investigated the relationship between these factors in 22 patients with anorexia nervosa, 18 patients with bulimia nervosa, and 32 healthy subjects. Alexithymia was assessed using the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale and depression using the Beck Depression Inventory. Patients with bulimia exhibited significantly higher thresholds to mechanically induced pain than healthy subjects. Thresholds to thermally induced pain in patients with anorexia or bulimia were similar and significantly higher than in the healthy subjects. Alexithymia and depression scores were significantly higher in anorexic and bulimic patients than in the healthy subjects. Analyses of covariance revealed that the degree of alexithymia did not influence thresholds to thermally and mechanically induced pain, whereas the severity of depression affected to some extent the threshold to thermally induced pain.
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PMID:Pain sensitivity, alexithymia, and depression in patients with eating disorders: are they related? 888 20

This article presents three studies examining whether alexithymia is associated with less perceived and network social support, whether such relationships are accounted for by reduced social skills associated with alexithymia, and whether limited social support links alexithymia to health problems. The relationships between alexithymia (Toronto Alexithymia Scale), social variables, and physical health and depression were examined in both healthy young adults and patients. Alexithymia (especially deficits in identifying and communicating feelings) was related to less perceived support, fewer close relationships, and less social skill: the social skills deficit accounted fully for the association between alexithymia and a smaller social network. Additionally, alexithymia was related to both somatic complaints and depression, but social support generally was not. It is concluded that alexithymia is associated with reduced perceived and network social support, that these associations are likely due to alexithymia-related deficiencies in social skills but that reduced social support does not account for the relationship between alexithymia and health problems.
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PMID:Alexithymia, social support and health problems. 903 15


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