The Relationship between Alexithymia, Anxiety, Depression, and Internet Addiction Severity in a Sample of Italian High School Students

Abstract

We aimed to assess whether Internet addiction (IA) severity was related to alexithymia scores among high school students, taking into account the role of gender differences and the possible effect of anxiety, depression, and age. Participants in the study were 600 students (ages ranging from 13 to 22; 48.16% girls) recruited from three high schools in two cities from Southern Italy. Participants completed a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, the Internet Addiction Test, the Hamilton Anxiety Scale, and the Hamilton Depression Scale. The findings of the study showed that IA scores were associated with alexithymia scores, over and above the effect of negative emotions and age. Students with pathological levels of alexithymia reported higher scores on IA severity. In particular, results showed that difficulty in identifying feelings was significantly associated with higher scores on IA severity. No effect of gender was found. Implications for clinicians were discussed.

Alexithymia among Jordanian university students: Its prevalence and correlates with depression, anxiety, stress, and demographics

“…These rates were higher than those found by most other studies. For example, alexithymia was 3.6% among Turkish medical students, 8.7% among UK nursing students, 16.7% among Italian high school students, and 17.92% among British undergraduate students . However, few other studies found slightly higher rates of alexithymia than those found in this study, such as Lala et al., who found it to be 26.1% of their undergraduate students.…”

“…Contrary to the results of most studies on alexithymia, levels of alexithymia in this study was significantly higher in female students (57.24 for females and 54.53 for males, t = 2.91, P ≤ 0.05). In most similar studies, higher levels of alexithymia were found among males . However, Mason et al .…”

“…Also, results of this study regarding levels of alexithymia were around or lower than other studies. For example, alexithymia level was 54.99 among Italian students and 59.00 among Pakistani undergraduate students…”

“…Some studies found that the prevalence of alexithymia was higher among females. For example, in a sample of Italian high school students, the prevalence of alexithymia was 13.8% among males and 19.7% among females 5 and was 7.7% among males and 20% among females in British undergraduate students. 6 Some other studies found no differences in alexithymia between males and females.…”

Exploring the Online Cognition Scale in a Polish sample

“…On the other hand, the relation between attention deficit and Internet addiction is stronger in the female group (Yen, Yen, Chen, Tang, & Ko, 2009). No gender differences were found in the (Scimeca et al, 2014). The results of another study (Kaess et al, 2014) showed that gender is a significant predictor of Pathological Internet Use.…”