Relation between Intensity of Alexithymia s Aspects and Depression

Introduction: Depression disorder is a temperament disorder which requires a person to have the following symptoms at least for two weeks: depressed character, apparent reduction of enthusiasm in his or her activities, reduction of vitality and changing pattern of sleeping. Alexithymia is a characteristic trait that applies to incapability of assessment and expression of feeling and defines as a form of deficit in recognition and description of feelings, deficit in discriminating between bodily feelings and emotional stimulation and externally-oriented thinking. In this study we have separately examined the relation between all the three aspects of major depressive disorder(MDD), i.e. Cognitive, affective and physiological, and three aspects of Alexithymia Materials and Methods : In present study we have applied cross-sectional method. The study population comprised 120 mens and womens suffering from major MDD who had referred to BAHARAN hospital in ZAHEDAN and EBNE SINA hospital in MASHHAD. self-reported depression with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-21). Alexithymic features were assessed with the Twenty-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Results: In terms of intensity , 3 , 31 , 86 persons Respectively have mild, Moderate and severe depression and 110 persons have Alexithymia symptoms and 10 persons without alexithymia (p= 0.0001). The result of correlation coefficient between Alexithymia aspects and that of MDD shows that, MDD is assosiated with all three aspects of Alexithymia. Also physiological and cognitive aspects of major depression disorder is associated with all three aspects of Alexithymia. And affective aspects of MDD is associated with Difficulty Describing Feelings and Difficulty Identifying Feelings(DDF, DIF), but no meaningful relationship with EOT was found. Discussion and Conclusion : The more a person has difficulty in identification and discriminating of his or her emotions, he or she experience the more powerful degree of depression. The treatment solutions that aimed for Alexithymia may effective in the prevention and the treatment of depression disorders

کلیدواژه ها:

Alexithymia ، Depression ، Cognitive aspect ، affective aspect ، physiological aspect