This study is designed to evaluate psychosomatic characteristics, especially alexithymic tendency, of the patients with bronchial asthma and to determine whether alexithymia is a unique personality characteristic of the patient with classical
psychosomatic disorder, using various methods developed for measurement of alexithymia.
Thirty normal healthy persons, thirty patients with extrinsic bronchial asthma, thirty schizophrenic patients, and thirty-three neurotic patients were studied to assess differences in alexithymic tendency using the methods of thirty minute
psychiatric
interview, BIQ, MMPI-A, TAS and TAT. They were also assessed by MMPI and SCL-90-R to evaluate general personality traits and underlying psychopathology.
All the groups were in the normal range of the scores of MMPI and SCL-90-R. The neurotic patients showed the highest level of psychopathology, and the normal group the lowest in both inventories. Bronchial asthma and schizophrenic patients were
between
the highest and the lowest extremes of the scores. The mean score of BIQ in the bronchial asthma group was significantly higher than that in the normal group(p<0.05) and no difference was found among the other groups. The mean scores of MMPI-A
and
the
total scores of TAS showed no difference among all the groups. In TAT the neurotic patients scored the highest in affect word counts and showed significantly higher counts than ther bronchial asthma patients and schizophrenic patients(p<0.0001),
while
they showed no significant difference with normal persons. Tat is, in TAT the group of bronchial asthma had more alexithymic tendency than that of the neurotic patients(p<0.0001),and in BIQ in had more alexithymic tendency than that of
normal(p<0.05).
Bronchial asthma patients were found to express less emotional words than normal persons and neurotic patients, but were not differentiated any more from groups of the schizophrenic, neurotic, and normal by TAS and MMPI-A.
The authors with the inconsistent results of this study, could not confirm the assumption that alexithymia is the personality characteristic of patients with classical psychosomatic disease, But we found the BIQ was useful in discriminating
between
the
groups of normal and psychosomatic disease, and TAT was useful in discriminating between the groups of neurosis and psychosomatic disease with alexithymia construct.
This study has some limitations in the number of subjects and the diversity of psychosomatic diseases, but in spite of those limitations the findings of the findings of this study suggest some considerations are needed for further investigation.
@ES They are as follows:
@EN First of all, a study on the need of the combination of multiple tools in consideration of the specific discriminating ability of each tool: secondly, a clinical study on the relationship between psychosomatic diseases and the psychotic state
in a
large population: thirdly, a study on the applications of foreign tools in the Korean culture and on the problem of the validity and reliability of such tools: and a study is needed on the possibilities that alexithymic tendency is not a specific
predisposing factor of personalities with psychosomatic disorder.
It is thought that more variegated studies on the relationships between diverse psychosomatic diseases and alexithymia, and on the development of reliable tools with validity in the measurement of alexithymia in the context of the Korean culture
should
be taken in further investigations.
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