Characteristics of Alexithymic Patients in a Chronic Respiratory Illness Population

Alexithymic characteristics in 100 chronic respiratory illness patients were assessed by means of the Beth Israel Psychosomatic Questionnaire (BIQ). The study was designed to explore the relationship of alexithymia to various demographic variables and three disease categories (asthma, tuberculosis, and chronic obstructive respiratory disease). The BIQ was found to yield a high inter-rater reliability when the interviews were conducted and rated in a systematic manner. Significant relationships were found between alexithymia and age, marital status, and disease categories; however, the latter two relationships appear to some extent to be artifacts of the age differences of the subjects among categories. More research is needed to understand the nature of the relationship between alexithymia and age, but it should also be profitable to examine the relationship of this variable to medical outcome.