Correlations between individual clinical manifestations of depressive symptom complex and severity of alexithymia and individual alexithymic features in patients with moderate endogenomorphic depression
This research confirms high prevalence of alexithymic features in patients with clinical depression. Alexithymia shows association with more severe course of affective disorders (earlier onset, longer duration and more severe episodes). The authors report links between alexithymia and individual alexithymic features, and a number of affective, cognitive, behavioural and physical manifestations of depressive symptom complex, severity of suicidal intention and several additional symptoms (like auto- and allopsychic depersonalization, hypochondria, obsessive beliefs). Severity of depression and specific manifestations of depressive symptom complex relate in different ways to the TAS-20 total score and its factor structure that reflects the key components of alexithymia. Regression analysis suggests that severity of depression and the hopelessness affect happen to be significant predictors of alexithymia (independent from gender and age), but stop being them when the education parameter is taken into account. Alexithymia was associated with anxiety, and this association did not depend on education, gender and age parameters. Moreover, the anxious affect remained a significant predictor of alexithymia when socio-demographic and also clinical (like severity of depression and intensity of the hopelessness affect) variables were taken into account.