Insecure attachment and alexithymia in young men with mood symptoms

According to attachment theorists, affect regulation and quality of attachm ent are closely linked. As a personality trait associated with deficits in the cognitive processing and regulation of affects, alexithymia has been hy pothesized to correlate with insecure attachment. To test this hypothesis, we studied the relationships between alexithymia, adult attachment style, a nd retrospective memories of separation anxiety symptoms during childhood i n 100 young men with clinically significant mood symptoms. The most common DSM-IV diagnosis (N = 72) was adjustment disorder with depressed mood, with anxiety, or with mixed anxiety and depressed mood. Each participant comple ted the Twenty-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the state form of the State-Trait Anxiety Index (STAI), t he Attachment Style Questionnaire (ASQ), the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ ) and the Separation Anxiety Symptom Inventory (SASI). Alexithymic traits w ere more pronounced in those participants who had patterns of insecure atta chment and who reported more severe symptoms of separation anxiety during c hildhood, independently of the severity of their current anxiety and depres sive symptoms. Among the subgroup of participants with insecure attachment styles, those with preoccupied or fearful patterns had a higher prevalence of alexithymia (65% and 73%, respectively) than those with a dismissing pat tern (36%). These data suggest a role for early developmental factors in th e etiology of alexithymia.