Dealing with Alexithymia in a Day Psychiatric Hospital - A study identifying significant modulators to promote recovery

Objective: in this research, we studied changings and modulations of alexithymia [defined by Difficulties in Identifying Feelings (DIF); in Discussing Feelings (DDF) and by an Externally-Oriented Thinking (EOT)]. The purpose was to investigate if Day Psychiatric Hospitalization (DPH) could promote significant improvements on difficulties linked to alexithymia in a population of mood disorders patients (N = 73). Methods & results: a first study showed significant reductions of alexithymia scores. Considered as a personality trait, alexithymia’s changings lead us to promote the relative stability hypothesis, by displaying that moderate to high correlational levels were achieved. A second study revealed the variables impacting significantly on alexithymia. The selected variables were: demographic (i.e. gender; age; number of days of treatment); MMPI-2 variables; and perceived social support (assessed with the MSPSS scale). We found notably a positive effect of perceived social support (PSS) that reduced difficulties associated to alexithymia and other variables that increased alexithymia levels (e.g. antisocial practices, negative attitude to treatment). Conclusion: positive effects of PSS are well known and two main hypotheses were already proposed to explain its effect: PSS acting directly or as a buffer on stressful events. In conclusion, at the one hand, we showed that it is possible to significantly decrease at a certain level a phenomenon such as alexithymia. At the other hand, we enlightened significant modulators of alexithymia that might help therapists to promote or avoid specific aspects for patients involved in a recovery process.