Alexithymia in pain patients

Shulamith Kreitler*, Hana Gohar, Ann Eldar, Tamar Ezer, David Niv

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Alexithymia (a disorder denoting a lack of verbally expressed feelings) was found to characterize pain patients. The goals of the study were: (i) to examine the centrality of the role of alexithymia in pain patients; and (ii) to clarify the nature of alexithymia, namely, whether the low level of manifest emotionality reflects a linguistic-cognitive or an affective disorder. In a within-group design we tested the demographic, clinical, psychiatric, emotional and pain-descriptive correlates of alexithymia. The subjects 86 pain patients - were administered questionnaires assessing demographic and clinical features, trait anxiety and anger (Spielberger's STPI-X), inhibited anger (Kreitler and Kreitler), psychiatric tendencies (Derogatis, BSI) and pain experience (McGill Pain Questionnaire and Meaning Pain Scale). The results were that alexithymia was related significantly to 13 correlates of different domains, especially: higher age; lower education; higher symptom severity, anxiety, interpersonal sensitivity and inhibited anger and lower paranoid and hostilc tendencies. The findings confirm the central role of alexithymia in regard to pain, and support the view that alexithymia is an affective disorder. The treatment implication is to promote overt emotional expression in pain patients.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)295-306
Number of pages12
JournalPain Clinic
Volume8
Issue number4
StatePublished - 1996

Keywords

  • Alexithymia
  • Anger
  • Anxiety
  • Emotional expression
  • Pain descriptors
  • Pain patient

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