title: Exploring the association between oral health literacy and alexithymia.
abstract: Low health literacy and alexithymia have separately been emphasized as barriers to patient-practitioner communication, but the association between the two concepts has not been explored.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To test the hypothesis that low oral health literacy and alexithymia are associated.
  
  
  METHODS
  Adults (n=127) aged 21-80 years (56% women) participated in this cross-sectional study. Oral health literacy was assessed using the interview-based Adult Health Literacy Instrument for Dentistry (AHLID) with scores from 1-5. The self-administered Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) was used to assess three distinct TAS-20 factors and TAS-20 total score.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Significant negative correlations between AHLID scores and TAS-20 factors 2, 3 and TAS-20 total score were found. Regression analyses showed that TAS-20 factor 3, externally-oriented thinking (β=-0.21, SE=0.02, p=0.017), and TAS-20 total score (β=-0.18, SE=0.01, p=0.036) were significant predictors of AHLID level.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The hypothesis that low oral health literacy is associated with alexithymia was supported. This finding proposes that alexithymia may be considered as a possible factor for low oral health literacy. However, the correlations are not strong, and the results should be regarded as a first step to provide evidence with additional research on this topic being needed.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Stein
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bergdahl
authors.forename: K S
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Pettersen
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bergdahl
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000150:complications*; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D057220:Health Literacy; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009664:Norway; D009909:Oral Health