Abstract
BackgroundAlexithymia, the difficulty in describing or recognizing emotions, has been associated with various psychosomatic pathologies including psoriasis. The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of alexithymia and its association with anxiety and depression in patients with psoriasis compared with healthy participants, while taking into consideration demographic and clinical variables.MethodsOne hundred and eight psoriatic patients and 100 healthy participants from the general population completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). The severity of patients’ psoriasis was clinically assessed using the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI).ResultsPsoriatic patients had higher levels of alexithymia compared with healthy participants. While a rather high rate of psoriatic patients presented anxiety and depression as defined by the HADS, the differences that were found in comparison with the control group were not significant. Neither alexithymia nor its dimensions, difficulty in identifying feelings (DIF), difficulty in describing feelings (DDF) and externally oriented thinking (EOT), were associated with gender or psoriasis severity. Age was associated only with EOT, which was independent of depression and anxiety. Higher anxiety and depression were connected with higher alexithymia and DIF, while higher anxiety with higher DDF as well.ConclusionsThe alexithymia prevalence was higher in psoriatic patients than that in healthy participants, while it was positively correlated with anxiety and depression. Difficulty in identifying feelings was connected with both anxiety and depression, whereas difficulty in describing them was only with anxiety. Finally, externally oriented thinking was predicted only from age.
Highlights
Alexithymia, the difficulty in describing or recognizing emotions, has been associated with various psychosomatic pathologies including psoriasis
Most studies concerning alexithymia in psoriatic patients have not taken into account important factors, which are associated with both psoriasis and alexithymia, such as depression or anxiety, or they have evaluated them using psychometric tools that contain somatic aspects which may be common in psoriasis [11]
Our results indicate that alexithymia in patients with psoriasis is independent from the age, the gender and the severity of the disease, but there is a significant association between anxiety or/and depression and alexithymia
Summary
Alexithymia, the difficulty in describing or recognizing emotions, has been associated with various psychosomatic pathologies including psoriasis. The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of alexithymia and its association with anxiety and depression in patients with psoriasis compared with healthy participants, while taking into consideration demographic and clinical variables. Both genetic and environmental factors are believed to play an important role in the pathogenesis of the disorder [8]. Despite the existence of the psychosomatic hypothesis, only a few researchers have studied the association between alexithymia and psoriasis and most of them without using a control group or in case they did; this consisted of a relatively small number of participants [9,10]. In Greece, studies have mainly focused on the relationship between psoriasis and depression [14]
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