The Inability To Express Emotions Is Associated
With Coronary Heart Diseases
May 28, 2007
A study by Margarita Beresnevaité (Kaunas University, Lithuania) has shed some
new light on the inability to express emotions (alexithymia) and coronary heart
disease in the May issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.
Despite increasing emphasis on using multiple methods to assess personality
constructs in psychosomatic research, previous investigations of relations
between alexithymia and type A behavior (TAB) have been limited by the use of
single methods of measurement and almost no attempt to assess subcomponents of
TAB. The aims of this study were to (1) evaluate levels of agreement between
structured interview assessments of alexithymia, TAB, hostility, and time
urgency and well-established self-report measures of these constructs, and (2)
explore relations between alexithymia and TAB and its subcomponents in patients
with coronary heart disease (CHD). 62 CHD patients were investigated 6 weeks
after coronary angioplasty. Alexithymia was assessed with the Diagnostic
Criteria for Psychosomatic Research (DCPR) and the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia
Scale (TAS-20). TAB was assessed with the DCPR and the Short Form of the Jenkins
Activity Survey Type A scale (JAS-SF). Time urgency was assessed with the DCPR
and the Speed/Impatience scale of the Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS-S), and
hostility was assessed with the DCPR and the Hostility subscale of the Revised
Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-HOS). The DCPR classifications showed reasonably high
levels of agreement with the TAS-20 and JAS-SF classifications of alexithymia
and TAB, but lower levels of agreement in identifying patients with high
hostility on the SCL-HOS and high time urgency on the JAS-S. Alexithymia
measured by both the DCPR and the TAS-20 was unrelated to both self-report and
structured interview measures of TAB, hostility, and time urgency. Conclusions:
The DCPR is a suitable screening instrument for assessing alexithymia and TAB,
although the two constructs are unrelated.
Psychotherapy
And Psychosomatics
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