Alexithymia in somatizing patients

Abstract

Aexithymia is a clinical concept referring to the difficulty some people have in verbalizing their feeling states. It is prevalent in patients suffering from a variety of psychosomatic illnesses. The authors conduced a controlled study to investigate the presence of this trait among patients attending a psychosomatic clinic and those attending a traditional outpatient psychiatric clinic in a county general hospital. The results indicate that, in this lower socioeconomic population, alexithymia is equally present in both clinics. The discrepancy between these results and those previously reported are discussed, as are the ramifications of the findings.