title: Clients' positive and negative expressiveness within their families and alexithymia.
abstract: 49 prospective clients from a midwestern urban community, who sought counseling at a university training clinic, completed the Self-expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire and the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale. As predicted, the positive self-expressiveness scores were significantly negatively correlated -.52 with scores on alexithymia, and the negative self-expressiveness scores were significantly positively correlated .34 with alexithymia. These results support the premise that mental health clients' self-reported lack of positive expressiveness and abundance of negative expressiveness within their family context may be attributes associated with their tendency to be alexithymic.
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo 49008-5090, USA.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Yelsma
authors.forename: A J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Hovestadt
authors.forename: J E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Nilsson
authors.forename: B D
authors.initials: BD
authors.lastname: Paul
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000523:psychology*; D019260:Expressed Emotion / Q000145:classification; D005192:Family Health; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012044:Regression Analysis