Abstract
The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of alexithymia and evaluate the relationship between alexithymia and psychiatric symptoms, severity of pain, depression and anxiety in Turkish female outpatients with fibromyalgia (FM). Fifty-one patients with FM according to the operational criteria proposed by the American College of Rheumatology were included in the study. These patients were measured for alexithymia, depression, anxiety, psychiatric symptoms and pain intensity. Twenty (39.2%) of the FM patients had 61 or higher scores on TAS-20 and were considered as alexithymic. We found positive correlations between TAS-20 and BDI, BAI, HDRS, HARS Psychic and HARS Somatic subscales and subscales of SCL-90, whereas there were no significant correlations between TAS-20 and VAS, VRS and HARS. Similar correlations were found for 'difficulty in identifying feelings' (DIF) and 'difficulty in describing feelings' (DDF) subscales of TAS-20. The 'externally orientated thinking' (EOT) subscale of TAS-20 was correlated only with BAI and HARS Somatic scales. Determinants were BDI, SCL-90 Symptom Index scores when total TAS score was taken as a dependent variable in linear regression. Alexithymia was related with current general psychiatric symptoms and severity of depression and anxiety, but not with severity of pain in FM patients.