[Evaluation of alexithymic traits in bronchial asthma patients. Use of the Schalling Sifneos Personality Scale].

Abstract

The authors investigate the alexithymia phenomenon and the possibility of quantifying it by administering the Schalling-Sifneos Personality Scale on four groups of subjects: asthmatics, psychosomatics other than bronchial asthmatics, patients afflicted with non-psychosomatic chronic illnesses and healthy subjects. The questionnaire permits a quantitative evaluation of the alexithymia phenomenon that appears significantly more evident in asthmatics than in patients afflicted with chronic illnesses and healthy subjects. The patients afflicted with psychosomatic illnesses other than asthma attain higher scores than asthmatic patients. The authors identify certain items on the scale as being particularly associated with the alexithymia phenomenon, enough to be able to construct a partial alexithymia score, indicative in itself of the presence of alexithymia personality traits, even in the absence of particularly high total alexithymia scores. Variations in age and educational level influence scores obtained by healthy subjects and patients afflicted with chronic illnesses, while this does not occur in asthmatics and other psychosomatic patients. This seems to indicate that the higher scores of the latter are not influenced by social or statistical types of factors, but rather by illness-related factors.