Alexithymia and psychiatric symptoms in a population of nursery workers: Astudy using the 20-item Toronto alexithymia scale

This study investigated alexithymia in a sample of professional nursery wor kers in Huddinge community, Sweden. In a previous study in general practice it was found that alexithymia, in a mixed population seeking medical advic e, was associated with higher age, male gender, low education and the perso nality traits suspicion and distance as well as undetected depression. The choice of a professional female population allowed alexithymia to be studie d in a refined way without the impact of some of the confounding elements o f previous studies. The six variables investigated apart from alexithymia w ere feelings of well-being, symptoms of somatic and psychic anxiety, depres sive symptoms, gastro-intestinal symptoms, and level of social dysfunction. The prevalence of alexithymia was 7.9%. Fifty percent of the items assessi ng somatic anxiety and 28.5% of those assessing depressive symptoms were re lated to high TAS-20 scores in this healthy all-female population. The feel ing factors of TAS-20, difficulty in identifying and expressing feelings, a ccounted in this study for the majority of relations to the other variables whilst the third factor, externally oriented thinking, remained independen t and mainly nonrelated to the other measured variables. It had been hypoth esised that a deficit in the cognitive processing and modulation of emotion s may leave alexithymic individuals prone to states of heightened sympathet ic arousal. Confirmation of these theories was found in this study where su bjects expressing high levels of vegetative and visceral symptoms of anxiet y also scored high for alexithymia and depressive symptoms.