Alexithymia and Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Systematic Review

Martino, Gabriella; Caputo, Andrea; Schwarz, Peter; Bellone, Federica; Fries, Walter; Quattropani, Maria C.; Vicario, Carmelo M.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01763

Cited by 49 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…Immature defense mechanisms are often associated to various levels of severity of psychological functioning and different psychopathological conditions, especially personality disorders (e.g., Di Giuseppe, Gennaro et al, 2019;Hilsenroth, Callahan, & Eudell, 2003;Lingiardi et al, 1999;Oasi et al, 2017;Perry, Presniak, & Olson, 2013). On the other hand, mature defense mechanisms are associated with physical and psychological health and better adjustment (Hayden et al, 2021;Martino et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mentalization, attachment, and defense mechanisms: a Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual-2-oriented empirical investigation

Tanzilli

Giuseppe

Giovanardi

et al. 2021

ResPsy

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Mentalizing capacities depends on the quality of primary attachment interactions with caregivers who thinks of the child as a subject with mental states. Operationalized as reflective functioning, mentalization is crucial for regulating emotions and developing of a coherent sense of identity, for interacting with individuals making sense to own and others mental states, and for distinguishing internal and external realities without distortions. Although the clinical literature on interplay between mentalization, attachment, and emotional regulation is rich, the empirical research is limited. This study sought to explore connections between reflective functioning, attachment styles, and implicit emotion regulation, operationalized as defense mechanisms, in a group of depressive patients. Twenty-eight patients were interviewed using the adult attachment interview (AAI) and diagnosed using the Psychodynamic Chart-2 of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual, Second Edition. The reflective functioning scale and the defense mechanisms rating scale Q-sort were applied to AAI transcriptions to assess reflective functioning and defensive profile. Patients with secure attachment showed significantly higher levels in reflective functioning and overall defensive functioning as compared to those with insecure attachment. Good reflective functioning and secure attachment correlated with mature defenses and specific defensive mechanisms that serve in better regulating affective states. Overall, the relationship between mentalization, attachment and emotion regulation lay the foundations for the delineation of defensive profiles associated with attachment patterns and reflective functioning in depressive patients. The systematic assessment of these psychological dimensions with gold-standard tools may help in tailoring personalized therapeutic interventions and promoting more effective treatments.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mentalization, attachment, and defense mechanisms: a Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual-2-oriented empirical investigation

Tanzilli

Giuseppe

Giovanardi

et al. 2021

ResPsy

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“…Research in the field reports an alexithymia prevalence rate of 13% in the non-clinical population, where the alexithymia rate appears to be nearly double in men (17%) compared with women (10%) [ 4 ]. In terms of impact, alexithymia may be associated with somatic sensations that accompany emotional arousal and may be related to somatic diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease and type 2 diabetes mellitus [ 5 , 6 ]. It is frequently associated with various psychopathological conditions such as depression [ 7 ], anxiety [ 8 ], and addiction [ 9 ], where the prevalence rate is higher than 30% [ 10 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

No Evidence of Perceptual Pseudoneglect in Alexithymia

et al. 2021

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Neuroscience research links alexithymia, the difficulty in identifying and describing feelings and emotions, with left hemisphere dominance and/or right hemisphere deficit. To provide behavioral evidence for this neuroscientific hypothesis, we explored the relationship between alexithymia and performance in a line bisection task, a standard method for evaluating visuospatial processing in relation to right hemisphere functioning. We enrolled 222 healthy participants who completed a version of the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), which measures alexithymia, and were asked to mark (bisect) the center of a 10-cm horizontal segment. The results document a significant rightward shift in the center of the line in participants with borderline and manifest alexithymia compared with non-alexithymic individuals. The higher the TAS-20 score, the greater the rightward shift in the line bisection task. This finding supports the right hemisphere deficit hypothesis in alexithymia and suggests that visuospatial abnormalities may be an important component of this mental condition.

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“…Hence, alexithymia started to be considered a non-specific vulnerability factor involved in the development of physical and mental disorders as well as a specifier associated with adverse outcomes when treating such conditions [see e.g., (26,27)]. Concurrently, alexithymia was associated with several medical conditions such as diabetes, cancer or chronic illnesses (28)(29)(30).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Scientometric Review of Alexithymia: Mapping Thematic and Disciplinary Shifts in Half a Century of Research

et al. 2020

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The term “alexithymia” was introduced in the lexicon of psychiatry in the early ‘70s by Sifneos to outline the difficulties manifested by some patients in identifying and describing their own emotions. Since then, the construct has been broadened and partially modified. Today this describes a condition characterized by an altered emotional awareness which leads to difficulties in recognizing your own and others' emotions. In half a century, the volume of scientific products focusing on alexithymia has exceeded 5,000. Such an expansive knowledge domain poses a difficulty for those willing to understand how alexithymia research has developed. Scientometrics embodies a solution to this issue, employing computational, and visual analytic methods to uncover meaningful patterns within large bibliographical corpora. In this study, we used the CiteSpace software to examine a corpus of 4,930 publications on alexithymia ranging from 1980 to 2020 and their 100,251 references included in Web of Science. Document co-citation analysis was performed to highlight pivotal publications and major research areas on alexithymia, whereas journal co-citation analysis was conducted to find the related editorial venues and disciplinary communities. The analyses suggest that the construct of alexithymia experienced a gradual thematic and disciplinary shift. Although the first conceptualization of alexithymia came from psychoanalysis and psychosomatics, empirical research was pushed by the operationalization of the construct formulated at the end of the ‘80s. Specifically, the development of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, currently the most used self-report instrument, seems to have encouraged both the entrance of new disciplines in the study of alexithymia (i.e., cognitive science and neuroscience) and an implicit redefinition of its conceptual nucleus. Overall, we discuss opportunities and limitations in the application of this bottom-up approach, which highlights trends in alexithymia research that were previously identified only through a qualitative, theory-driven approach.

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Alexithymia and Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Systematic Review

Cited by 49 publications

References 87 publications

Mentalization, attachment, and defense mechanisms: a Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual-2-oriented empirical investigation

Mentalization, attachment, and defense mechanisms: a Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual-2-oriented empirical investigation

No Evidence of Perceptual Pseudoneglect in Alexithymia

A Scientometric Review of Alexithymia: Mapping Thematic and Disciplinary Shifts in Half a Century of Research

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