Alexithymia is associated with increased all-cause mortality risk in men, but not in women: A 10-year follow-up study.

J Psychosom Res

Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medicine Greifswald, Ellernholzstraße 1-2, 17475 Greifswald, Germany; German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases DZNE, Site Rostock/Greifswald, Ellernholzstraße 1-2, 17475 Greifswald, Germany.

Published: April 2021

AI Article Synopsis

  • Alexithymia, which affects emotional awareness, is linked to a higher risk of mortality, particularly in men, according to a study of 1380 individuals over ten years.
  • The study found that while alexithymia significantly increased mortality risk in men (HR = 1.050), this effect was not observed in women (HR = 1.008).
  • The research highlighted specific subfactors of alexithymia, such as difficulties identifying feelings (DIF) and describing feelings (DDF), and suggested that socioeconomic and clinical factors must be explored further to understand this relationship better.

Article Abstract

Objective: Alexithymia is associated with various mental as well as physical disorders. Some evidence also suggested high alexithymia to increase mortality risk, but these results are few and based on specific sample compositions. We aimed to investigate the impact of alexithymia on mortality risk in a large population based cohort. In addition, we sought to elucidate the effects of the subfactors of alexithymia and sex differences.

Methods: In a sample of N = 1380 individuals from the Study of Health in Pomerania (SHIP), we investigated the hazard-ratio (HR) of alexithymia as obtained by the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20) on all-cause mortality over an average observation time of 10 years. Sex-by-TAS-20-interactions as well as sex-stratified analyses were performed.

Results: Alexithymia was significantly associated with enhanced mortality risk (HR = 1.033; 95%-CI = 1.008-1.058); p = 0.009). While sex-by-TAS-20 interactions remained insignificant, sex-stratified analyses showed that this effect was only significant in men (HR = 1.050; 95%-CI = 1.022-1.079; p ≤ 0.001), but not in women (HR: 1.008; 95%-CI = 0.960-1.057; p = 0.76). The effect was validated for the "difficulties identifying feelings" (DIF) and "difficulties describing feelings" (DDF) subfactors of the TAS-20.

Conclusion: Our study supports and extents previous findings by indicating that mortality risk enhancing effects of alexithymia are specific to male subjects and validated for the DIF and DDF facets. Socioeconomic, clinical and metabolic factors were associated with this relationship. Finding that the impact of alexithymia remains stable in the fully adjusted models suggests that yet unidentified additional factors must be considered.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2021.110372DOI Listing

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