Brief reportAlexithymia is associated with anxiety among adolescents☆
Introduction
Alexithymia signifies a personality construct representing reduced ability to identify and describe feelings, a limited imagination, and externally oriented thinking (Sifneos, 1973). In adults, the estimated prevalence of alexithymia is approximately 10% (Mattila et al., 2006, Franz et al., 2008), and the prevalence in adolescents appears to be at the same level (Säkkinen et al., 2007, Honkalampi et al., 2009). Alexithymia is more frequent in adult men than in women, but in adolescents no gender difference has been shown (Joukamaa et al., 2007, Honkalampi et al., 2009).
In several previous studies with adult populations, alexithymia has been associated with anxiety (Devine et al., 1999, Marchesi et al., 2005). However, the causation is still somewhat unclear. It is possible that alexithymic individuals are more susceptible to anxiety (Devine et al., 1999), but there is also evidence suggesting that, depression or anxiety could result in reactive regression of emotional development and thus evoke alexithymic features (Honkalampi et al., 2000a). However, the data accumulated on this association up to date are mostly from clinical patient groups, whereas only a few studies have dealt with non-clinical populations.
The aim of the present study was to explore this possible association in a population sample of late adolescents. It has been suggested that alexithymia is influenced by anxiety directly whereas the influence of depression would be indirect and mediated through anxiety (Berthoz et al., 1999). Hence, in order to assess the association reliably, we included depression and alcohol consumption as covariates.
Section snippets
Material
The material was recruited from a sample of students who had earlier participated in studies investigating eating disorder (ED) symptoms among adolescents (14−16 years old) in secondary schools in the city of Turku in Finland during the school years 2003−2005 (Hautala et al., 2006, Hautala et al., 2008, Hautala et al., 2009). For the present study, the sample included those who in the previous studies had reported one or more ED symptoms as measured by means of the SCOFF questionnaire (n = 320),
Results
Due to missing data, the actual number of subjects varied between 716 and 729 for different variables. Table 1 presents the mean scores for the different scales by gender. The mean TAS-20 score was 45 (range 22−73) and the prevalence of alexithymia was 8.2% for females and 8.5% for males. 42.6% of females and 48.7% of males were AUDIT positive. Based on the RBDI, 78.8% of females and 88.9% of males were classified as having no or only very mild depression symptoms, while 8.7% vs. 7.4% had mild,
Discussion
The main finding in the present study was that, alexithymia is associated with anxiety in late adolescents. The results remained significant even when depression and alcohol consumption were controlled for. To our best knowledge, no earlier studies have assessed this association in younger populations.
The association between alexithymia and depression have been repeatedly established both in adults (Honkalampi et al., 2000b, Le et al., 2007) and in adolescents (Ciarrochi et al., 2008,
Role of funding source
This study was supported by the Turku University Foundation and Turku Municipal Health Care and Social Services. The role of the sponsors was limited to providing financial support for the conduct of the research and for the preparation of the manuscript.
Conflict of interest
The authors have no conflict of interest to claim.
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2022, Journal of Psychiatric ResearchCitation Excerpt :Alexithymia is theorized as a potential personality dimension (Luminet et al., 2021b) with potential repercussions for all stages of emotional regulation (Luminet et al., 2021a), though here we focus upon its interaction with emotion identification and ramifications for mental illnesses. Alexithymia is associated with multiple mental illnesses, including depression (Wise et al., 1990), anxiety disorders (Karukivi et al., 2010), substance use disorders (Bruce et al., 2012; Cecero and Holmstrom, 1997; de Haan et al., 2014; de Timary et al., 2008; Pombo et al., 2014) gambling disorder (Lumley and Roby, 1995), eating disorders (Taylor et al., 1996), psychosomatic disorders (Lundh and Simonsson-Sarnecki, 2001), and autism (Poquerusse et al., 2018; Szatmari et al., 2008). Impairments in particular components of the proposed model may not only underlie different aspects of alexithymia, but also have ramifications for different mental illnesses.
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This study was conducted at the Unit of Adolescent Psychiatry, Turku University Hospital and the University of Turku, Finland.