The impact of family alexithymia on the severity of restrictive eating disorders in adolescent patients

Abstract

Background Alexithymia is the inability to identify and describe one’s own emotions. Adolescents who suffer from Restrictive Eating Disorders (REDs) show a higher prevalence of alexithymia than the general population. Methods The study explored the correlation between levels of alexithymia in mothers, fathers, and adolescents affected by REDs and patients’ ability to recognize their emotions. The study also aimed to evaluate if patients’ emotional distress can significantly impact the severity of their disorder and functioning measured by the Clinical Global Impression Scale - Severity (CGI-S) and the Children’s Global Assessment Scale (CGAS). We enrolled 67 families of adolescents affected by REDs. Parents and patients’ levels of alexithymia were assessed through the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Spearman’s correlation shows a statistically significant correlation between mothers and patients’ levels of alexithymia. Results Our findings also suggest that fathers and mothers’ TAS scores correlate with each other. However, there is no statistically significant relationship between the influence of the TAS scores of fathers and sons/daughters. Conclusions In conclusion, mothers’ level of alexithymia could influence both fathers and patients’ difficulty in identifying and describing their own emotions. This relationship can be investigated further when considering externally oriented thinking. However, the severity of the disease and overall functioning do not appear to be affected by patients’ levels of alexithymia.

Is Interoception Deficit Linking Alexithymia and Eating Spectrum Symptoms? Study on a Non-Clinical Sample of Young Adults

“…Moreover, we found that females showed more relevant alexithymic traits than males (as detected by the TAS-20), especially in the domain of an inadequate identification of feelings. This finding is partially in line with the literature and could be explained with the more frequent occurrence of eating spectrum traits in females than in males: the 'psychopathological core' of alexithymia is characterized by a marked difficulty in emotions' identification and elaboration and by a significant interference with self-regulation processes predisposing to dysfunctional eating behaviors, such as binge-eating [38][39][40] or emotional eating [41]. However, several studies pointed out that alexithymic traits might be more frequent among males than females as a consequence of the so-called 'normative male alexithymia' [42], characterized by a deficit in processing emotions.…”