Alexithymia behaves as a personality trait over a 5-year period in Finnish general population

OBJECTIVE

Temporal stability is a basic assumption underlying any personality trait construct. Previous research on the stability of alexithymia has led to a controversy over whether alexithymia should be viewed as a state-dependent phenomenon or as a stable personality trait. The aim of this 5-year longitudinal study was to examine the temporal stability of alexithymia in the general population in Finland.

METHODS

Alexithymia was measured with the 20-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) at the baseline and 5 years later.

RESULTS

The test-retest correlations of the TAS-20 total and factor-specific scores at the baseline and at the 5-year follow-up ranged from moderate to high in both genders, reflecting a rather high relative stability of the TAS-20 scores over a period of 5 years.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings of our study suggest that alexithymia behaves like a stable personality trait in the general population.

Prevalence of alexithymia and its association with sociodemographic variables in the general population of Finland

The prevalence of alexithymia and its association with sociodemographic variables were studied in a sample of 1285 subjects representing the general population of Finland. Alexithymia was measured with the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Alexithymia was normally distributed in the population in both genders, confirming that it is a personality dimension. The prevalence of alexithymia was 13%. Men were alexithymic almost twice (17%) as often as women (10%). Multivariate analysis showed that alexithymia was associated with male gender, advanced age, low educational level, and low socioeconomic status. As to the three factors of the TAS-20, men scored higher in factors 2 (difficulty in describing feelings) and 3 (externally oriented thinking). but there was no gender difference in factor 1 (difficulty in identifying feelings). Comparative population studies in other countries are needed to find out whether there are any differences in the prevalence of alexithymia between cultures.

Alexithymic features do not predict compliance with psychotherapy in consultation-liaison patients

A 1-year follow-up study on 54 general hospital psychiatric consultation outpatients was carried out in order to determine whether alexithymic features, measured by the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) are predictive of psychotherapy recommendations and whether alexithymia is associated with patients' compliance with these recommendations. Contrary to what we expected, the presence of alexithymic features predicted neither treatment recommendations nor compliance. Psychological distress as measured by the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) proved to be a better predictor.

Alexithymia in psychiatric consultation-liaison patients

Alexithymic characteristics were assessed by the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS), a self-report measure of alexithymia, in 230 consecutive outpatients referred to a psychiatric consultation-liaison service. The prevalence of alexithymia was 37.8% (50.5% in men and 28.2% in women). Alexithymia was significantly associated with the following variables: male gender, low socioeconomic status, the presence of psychiatric disorder, especially depression, with old age and with a high level of psychological distress. No significant association between alexithymia and the presence of somatic illness was found.

Eight cases of patients with unfounded fear of AIDS

This article describes eight cases of patients treated at the Psychiatric Department of the University Central Hospital of Turku (UCHT) Finland who all had as a common feature an unfounded fear of AIDS. Three of the patients committed suicide and one of them had overt suicidal tendencies. An unfounded fear of AIDS may be a sign of psychiatric disturbance with increased suicidal risk. Increased fear of AIDS seems to have correlation with media and counselling services. Owing to the fact that these patients primarily seek medical help from other fields of medicine than psychiatry, they are a new problem especially for general hospital psychiatry.