Alexithymia and psychological distress among frequent attendance patients in health care.
BACKGROUND
The aim of the present study was to find out whether alexithymia is common in frequently attending primary health care patients and whether alexithymia and psychological distress are associated in these patients.


METHODS
Alexithymia was measured by the TAS-26 and psychological distress by the SCL-25 in a random sample of 394 working-age primary health care patients. Frequent attendance was defined as a minimum of 11 visits during 1 year to different kinds of outpatient health care services, excluding specialized psychiatric care.


RESULTS
Frequently attending patients with psychological distress were found to be alexithymic more commonly than other patients, but this was not the case with other frequently attending patients. In other words, frequent attendance and alexithymia had an association mediated by psychological distress.


CONCLUSIONS
There is a subgroup of frequently attending patients, who are alexithymic and have psychological distress, too. They usually visit health-care services because of a somatic complaint. We hypothesize that their expression of psychological distress was masked and somatized just because of alexithymia.
Joukamaa
M
M
Department of Psychiatry, University of Turku, Finland.
Karlsson
H
H
Sholman
B
B
Lehtinen
V
V
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology; D015984:Causality; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D015897:Comorbidity; D005260:Female; D005387:Finland / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012494:Sampling Studies; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000453:epidemiology*