Alexithymia and Breast Cancer

Abstract

The Schalling Sifneos Personality Scale (SSPS) and the Middlesex Hospital Questionnaire (MHQ) have been used in 381 women just before mammography at the Breast Center of the Radiology Institute, University of Bari (Italy). Of the 200 women who accepted to complete the questionnaires 13 were found positive for cancer. Student’s t test comparison of the mean SSPS and MHQ scores of the positive for cancer with the negative showed that women with breast cancer have more pronounced alexithymic but not neurotic traits. Our findings suggest that patients with cancer may have something in common with those suffering from so-called psychosomatic pathologies who have a constrained imagination and fantasy and difficulty in verbalizing their emotions. Thus, this study indicates a relationship between alexithymia and cancer.

Alexithymia in Cancer Patients: Review of the Literature

“…Eight studies provided information about staging, without including the stages in the analysis [23,24,25,26,33,35,36,37]; one specified that curative cases were included [34] and seven provided no information about the stages [19,22,27,32,38,39,40]. …”

“…In four studies alexithymia was assessed before cancer diagnosis, but no information was provided about the existence of other diseases or treatments [19,23,24,36]. Two studies specified whether patients were in palliative or curative treatment [33,35], one that alexithymia was assessed before surgery [38], one that patients underwent surgery and that analyses were controlled for adjuvant therapy [34], and four provided no information about treatment [22,32,39,40].…”

“…Differences between cancer patients and controls were observed for women with breast cancer, who showed significantly higher alexithymia scores [19,39], and for women with cervical dysplexia, who showed a higher prevalence of alexithymia (42.5%) than healthy women (12.8%) [24]. One study reported that male survivors of childhood cancer had a lower proneness to alexithymia than the healthy population, while females did not differ from healthy controls [27].…”

“…Research suggests that alexithymia might play a role in the onset or development of several psychiatric and physical health problems such as substance abuse or pathological gambling [3,4,5], eating [6,7] and somatoform disorders [8,9], chronic pain [10], low back pain [11] or kidney failure [12], posttraumatic stress disorders [13,14] and stress-related disorders in general [15], asthma [16], myocardial infarction [17], inflammatory bowel disease [18], and also cancer [19]. Furthermore alexithymia is suspected to have an impact on treatment compliance and treatment outcome [20].…”

A Twin Study of Alexithymia

“…Since then, elevated levels of alexithymia have been linked to a variety of physical and mental health problems. For example, elevated levels of alexithymia have been found in patients with cancer and diabetes [e.g., 5, 6]as well as depression and posttraumatic stress disorder [e.g., 7, 8]. A growing body of research suggests that alexithymia is an important construct that may be particularly valuable for understanding several physical and psychological disturbances [for a review, see ref.…”