Cargando…
Alexithymia, anxiety and depression in patients with psoriasis: a case–control study
BACKGROUND: Alexithymia, the difficulty in describing or recognizing emotions, has been associated with various psychosomatic pathologies including psoriasis. The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of alexithymia and its association with anxiety and depression in patients with psoriasis...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2014
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4269099/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25520742 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12991-014-0038-7 |
_version_ | 1782349321883090944 |
---|---|
author | Korkoliakou, Panagiota Christodoulou, Christos Kouris, Anargyros Porichi, Evgenia Efstathiou, Vasiliki Kaloudi, Eythymia Kokkevi, Anna Stavrianeas, Nikolaos Papageorgiou, Charalabos Douzenis, Athanasios |
author_facet | Korkoliakou, Panagiota Christodoulou, Christos Kouris, Anargyros Porichi, Evgenia Efstathiou, Vasiliki Kaloudi, Eythymia Kokkevi, Anna Stavrianeas, Nikolaos Papageorgiou, Charalabos Douzenis, Athanasios |
author_sort | Korkoliakou, Panagiota |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Alexithymia, the difficulty in describing or recognizing emotions, has been associated with various psychosomatic pathologies including psoriasis. The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of alexithymia and its association with anxiety and depression in patients with psoriasis compared with healthy participants, while taking into consideration demographic and clinical variables. METHODS: One hundred and eight psoriatic patients and 100 healthy participants from the general population completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). The severity of patients’ psoriasis was clinically assessed using the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI). RESULTS: Psoriatic patients had higher levels of alexithymia compared with healthy participants. While a rather high rate of psoriatic patients presented anxiety and depression as defined by the HADS, the differences that were found in comparison with the control group were not significant. Neither alexithymia nor its dimensions, difficulty in identifying feelings (DIF), difficulty in describing feelings (DDF) and externally oriented thinking (EOT), were associated with gender or psoriasis severity. Age was associated only with EOT, which was independent of depression and anxiety. Higher anxiety and depression were connected with higher alexithymia and DIF, while higher anxiety with higher DDF as well. CONCLUSIONS: The alexithymia prevalence was higher in psoriatic patients than that in healthy participants, while it was positively correlated with anxiety and depression. Difficulty in identifying feelings was connected with both anxiety and depression, whereas difficulty in describing them was only with anxiety. Finally, externally oriented thinking was predicted only from age. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4269099 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42690992014-12-18 Alexithymia, anxiety and depression in patients with psoriasis: a case–control study Korkoliakou, Panagiota Christodoulou, Christos Kouris, Anargyros Porichi, Evgenia Efstathiou, Vasiliki Kaloudi, Eythymia Kokkevi, Anna Stavrianeas, Nikolaos Papageorgiou, Charalabos Douzenis, Athanasios Ann Gen Psychiatry Primary Research BACKGROUND: Alexithymia, the difficulty in describing or recognizing emotions, has been associated with various psychosomatic pathologies including psoriasis. The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of alexithymia and its association with anxiety and depression in patients with psoriasis compared with healthy participants, while taking into consideration demographic and clinical variables. METHODS: One hundred and eight psoriatic patients and 100 healthy participants from the general population completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). The severity of patients’ psoriasis was clinically assessed using the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI). RESULTS: Psoriatic patients had higher levels of alexithymia compared with healthy participants. While a rather high rate of psoriatic patients presented anxiety and depression as defined by the HADS, the differences that were found in comparison with the control group were not significant. Neither alexithymia nor its dimensions, difficulty in identifying feelings (DIF), difficulty in describing feelings (DDF) and externally oriented thinking (EOT), were associated with gender or psoriasis severity. Age was associated only with EOT, which was independent of depression and anxiety. Higher anxiety and depression were connected with higher alexithymia and DIF, while higher anxiety with higher DDF as well. CONCLUSIONS: The alexithymia prevalence was higher in psoriatic patients than that in healthy participants, while it was positively correlated with anxiety and depression. Difficulty in identifying feelings was connected with both anxiety and depression, whereas difficulty in describing them was only with anxiety. Finally, externally oriented thinking was predicted only from age. BioMed Central 2014-12-10 /pmc/articles/PMC4269099/ /pubmed/25520742 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12991-014-0038-7 Text en © Korkoliakou et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Primary Research Korkoliakou, Panagiota Christodoulou, Christos Kouris, Anargyros Porichi, Evgenia Efstathiou, Vasiliki Kaloudi, Eythymia Kokkevi, Anna Stavrianeas, Nikolaos Papageorgiou, Charalabos Douzenis, Athanasios Alexithymia, anxiety and depression in patients with psoriasis: a case–control study |
title | Alexithymia, anxiety and depression in patients with psoriasis: a case–control study |
title_full | Alexithymia, anxiety and depression in patients with psoriasis: a case–control study |
title_fullStr | Alexithymia, anxiety and depression in patients with psoriasis: a case–control study |
title_full_unstemmed | Alexithymia, anxiety and depression in patients with psoriasis: a case–control study |
title_short | Alexithymia, anxiety and depression in patients with psoriasis: a case–control study |
title_sort | alexithymia, anxiety and depression in patients with psoriasis: a case–control study |
topic | Primary Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4269099/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25520742 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12991-014-0038-7 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT korkoliakoupanagiota alexithymiaanxietyanddepressioninpatientswithpsoriasisacasecontrolstudy AT christodoulouchristos alexithymiaanxietyanddepressioninpatientswithpsoriasisacasecontrolstudy AT kourisanargyros alexithymiaanxietyanddepressioninpatientswithpsoriasisacasecontrolstudy AT porichievgenia alexithymiaanxietyanddepressioninpatientswithpsoriasisacasecontrolstudy AT efstathiouvasiliki alexithymiaanxietyanddepressioninpatientswithpsoriasisacasecontrolstudy AT kaloudieythymia alexithymiaanxietyanddepressioninpatientswithpsoriasisacasecontrolstudy AT kokkevianna alexithymiaanxietyanddepressioninpatientswithpsoriasisacasecontrolstudy AT stavrianeasnikolaos alexithymiaanxietyanddepressioninpatientswithpsoriasisacasecontrolstudy AT papageorgioucharalabos alexithymiaanxietyanddepressioninpatientswithpsoriasisacasecontrolstudy AT douzenisathanasios alexithymiaanxietyanddepressioninpatientswithpsoriasisacasecontrolstudy |