Alexithymia ratings in bulimia nervosa: clinical correlates.

Jimerson, David C.; Wolfe, Barbara E.; Franko, Debra L.; Covino, Nicholas A.; Sifneos, Peter E.

doi:10.1097/00006842-199403000-00002

Cited by 111 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Alexithymia is considered a personality risk factor for a variety of medical and psychiatric disorders [6], including chronic headaches [7], essential hypertension [8], eating disorders [9, 10], substance abuse [11]and alcohol abuse [12]. Although the etiology of alexithymia is as yet unknown, Taylor [6]postulated that the link between alexithymia and increased risk for stress-related disorders is based on emotional dysregulation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intact Physiological Response to Arousal with Impaired Emotional Recognition in Alexithymia

Stone

Nielson

2001

Psychother Psychosom

120

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Background: The purpose of the present study was to clarify the relationship between the recognition of emotion and physiological response to emotion (i.e. arousal) in alexithymia. Methods: This study investigated differences in physiological arousal state, as measured by continuous heart rate, electrodermal activity (EDA) and self-reported emotional intensity before and after exposure to an emotionally arousing or neutral videotape among 41 high- or low-alexithymic young adult participants. Results: Across subjects, emotionally negative stimuli produced increased physiological arousal. However, high-alexithymic participants exposed to the arousing videotape did not report increased subjective emotional intensity, as did low-alexithymic participants. In addition, the baseline EDA of high-alexithymic participants was significantly higher than that of the low-alexithymic participants. Conclusions: Results support the prediction that alexithymia leads to a decoupling between subjective and physiological arousal when exposed to emotionally negative stimuli. This decoupling may increase alexithymic individuals’ risks for stress-related illness.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intact Physiological Response to Arousal with Impaired Emotional Recognition in Alexithymia

Stone

Nielson

2001

Psychother Psychosom

120

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“…Other conditions that are difficult to treat, such as angina pectoris [8] and bulimia [9], have been regarded by some researchers to be associated with inability to recognize and deal with emotions. Health care utilization in general has a complex relationship with different aspects of alexithymia and operational thinking.…”

Section: Untitledmentioning

confidence: 99%

Treatment of Patients with Chronic Somatic Symptoms by Means of Art Psychotherapy: A Process Description

Theorell

Konarski²,

Westerlund³

et al. 1998

Psychother Psychosom

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Background: Inability to express emotions is common in patients with long-lasting somatic symptoms associated with incapacitation and impaired quality of life. One method for treating this inability is art psychotherapy. In this study the typical course in such treatments is described. Patients were followed longitudinally before therapy and every 4th to 6th month during the treatment. Methods: Patients with long-lasting psychosomatic conditions resulting in partial or total loss of working capacity for at least 1 year have been treated in the programme. All of them had chronic pain. The majority of the patients that were referred to us were offered treatment. Three-fourths of those who started treatment stayed in treatment as long as the therapist considered it optimal. Twenty-four patients (22 women and 2 men) in the present study had their treatment started on average 2 years (range 13–42 months) before the end of the treatment period. In addition these 24 patients were contacted 6–48 months after the end of the therapy (average 23 months) and a short post-evaluation was made by telephone. Results: The first year of treatment was characterized by emotional turmoil paralleled by increased energy level reflected in temporary elevation of serum uric acid. Significant improvement was observed with regard to anxiety-depression after one year of treatment. A tendency towards decreased levels of psychosomatic symptoms in general was observed after two years of treatment. One-fourth of the 20 non-working or parttime working patients increased their working activity. Conclusions: A slow partial recovery was observed. Art psychotherapy may have contributed to this.

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“…Secondary alexithymia has been associated with PTSD and with environmental factors in the home, such as lack of positive communication (Berenbaum & James, 1994), and could be confounded with other psychological problems, such as depression, eating disorders, or poor social coping skills (Jimerson et al, 1994;Kauhanen et al, 1993;Prince & Berenbaum, 1993). It would seem to be important to clarify and understand the issues underlying primary alexithyrnia, before considering the possibility of secondary alexithymia.…”

Section: The Construct Of Alexithymia: a General Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Personality correlates of alexithymia have also been widely researched (Fukunishi & Rahe, 1995;Kauhanen, Kaplan, Julkunen, Wilson, & Salonen, 1993;Parker, Taylor, Bagby, & Acklin 1993;Rubino, 1995). Health related issues constitute a third major area associated with alexithymia (James & Large, 1991;Jimerson, Wolfe, Franko, Covino, & Sifneos, 1994;Kauhanen, Kaplan, Cohen, Salonen, & Salonen, 1994;Millard & Kinsler, 1992;Newton & Contrada, 1994;Sivik, 1993;Wheeler & Broad, 1994). Several studies to date have investigated physiological reactivity in alexithymia (Martin & Pihl, 1986;Newton & Contrada, 1994;Wehmer, Brejnak, Lumley, & Stettner, 1995).…”

Section: Chapter One Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Emotion processing in alexithymia

Parker¹

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Alexithymia refers to a lack of words for feelings and is considered to be a personality trait, leaving a person at risk for psychiatric and psychosomatic disorders. A reliable measure of alexithymia, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 comprises three factors which reflect the affective, cognitive and behavioural characteristics of the disorder: difficulty in identifying emotion, difficulty in describing emotion and externally oriented thinking. The construct is associated with low positive affectivity (PA) and high negative affectivity (NA).The goal of these studies was to disentangle NA and alexithymia, and to investigate the structural or functional impairment in emotion processing. There were 46 male and 100 female volunteer subjects, aged between 17 and 55, who participated in three studies.Subjects discriminated between facial identity and facial expression given temporal constraint in Study 1, and bet~een facial expression of emotion stimuli and neutral expressions given temporal constraint in Study 2. In Study 3 subjects colour named emotion and arousal words in a Stroop Task.In Study 1 all subjects were significantly more accurate in the identity condition. In Study 2 high alexithymics were significantly less accurate in the recognition of emotion given temporal constraint. Subjects with the greatest difficulty in describing emotions were the most impaired. There was a significant difference in the recognition of sad, angry and fearful stimuli. NA appeared to have a significant effect on perceiving differences in Study 1, but not in recognizing emotions in Study 2. While there were no ii between group effects in Study 3, there was a significant difference between conditions, with response time quickest for the baseline, and slowest for the arousal condition.These studies provide support for alexithymia as a viable construct. They help to disentangle NA and alexithymia, with NA having a significant effect in the attention stage of processing and alexithymia appearing to be a functional deficit, associated with difficulty in describing emotion, in the recognition stage of emotion processing. There appear to be overall differences in the accuracy of recognizing sadness, anger and fear.These studies also demonstrate that time, or temporal constraint, has a significant affect on emotion processing.iii

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Alexithymia ratings in bulimia nervosa: clinical correlates.

Cited by 111 publications

References 8 publications

Intact Physiological Response to Arousal with Impaired Emotional Recognition in Alexithymia

Intact Physiological Response to Arousal with Impaired Emotional Recognition in Alexithymia

Treatment of Patients with Chronic Somatic Symptoms by Means of Art Psychotherapy: A Process Description

Emotion processing in alexithymia

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