Evaluation of Alexithymia in Patients Admitted to the Dermatology Clinic

Abstract

Background and Aim: Alexithymia has been suggested to be an important symptom in psychodermatological patients. Our study aims to evaluate alexithymia by diseases groups in patients who were admitted at the dermatology clinic. Materials and Methods: The Toronto Alexithymia Scale was used on 150 patients, aged 15-75 years, who were admitted to the Dermatology Clinic and 100 age-sex matched controls, without any skin disease, among the admissions to general surgery clinic. The patients were divided into 5 groups based on diagnoses. A p<0.05 was considered significant in all tests. Results: While the overall alexithymic score in all patients was 51.27±10.71, these values were 45.30±7.50 in the healthy group, with the difference being statistically significant (p≤0.001). While 56.7% of the patients were not alexithymic, 23.3% were diagnosed to have borderline alexithymia, and 20% alexithymia. And in the control group, alexithymia borderline was found in 11 out of 100 persons (11%). The patients were classified into Group 1 Acne vulgaris 28%, Group 2 papulosquamous diseases 10%, Group 3 infectious skin diseases 16.7%, Group 4 dermatitis 14.7%, and Group 5 other diseases 30.7%. While there was no statistically significant difference between these values, (TAS-B) difficulty identifying emotions was found to be statistically low (p=0.04) in the dermatitis group. Conclusion: Some skin diseases may increase alexithymia or some dermatological diseases may predispose to alexithymia. Further studies with larger patient profiles organized in more specific groups are needed in order to elucidate possible alexithymia in the etiopathogenesis of dermatological diseases.