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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...

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Autores principales: Korkoliakou, Panagiota, Christodoulou, Christos, Kouris, Anargyros, Porichi, Evgenia, Efstathiou, Vasiliki, Kaloudi, Eythymia, Kokkevi, Anna, Stavrianeas, Nikolaos, Papageorgiou, Charalabos, Douzenis, Athanasios
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
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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.
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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
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