Journal of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences

Background and Objective: Somatization symptoms cause the high levels of worry, anxiety and overreaction in response to physical symptoms in people and it is said that the somatization can be caused by the disruption in emotional expressiveness. Giving the importance of this issue, the current study was conducted in order to determine the role of alexithymia and emotional expressivity in predicting somatization symptoms among students. 

Materials and Methods: The method of this study was descriptive. The studied sample included 115 students (65 girls and 50 boys) who were selected by a multistage random sampling from the population of Mohaghegh Ardabili university students during 2013-2014 educational years. Toronto alexithymia scale, Berkeley emotional expressivity questionnaire and somatization subscale of SCL-90-R were used to collect data. Data were analyzed by Pearson's correlation and multiple linear regression.

Results: The correlation results showed that the somatization symptoms have positive relationship with difficulty in describing feeling (r=0.34 p>0.001), difficulty in identifying feeling (r=0.39 p>0.001), external orient thinking style (r=0.18 p=0.02) and total score of alexithymia scale (r=0.39 p>0.001), but negative relationship with negative expressivity of the emotion (r=-0.17 p=0.03), positive expressivity of the emotion (r=-0.15 p=0.05), and total score of emotional expressivity (r=-0.18 p=0.02). The results of linear regression analyze also showed that 20% of the whole variance of the somatization symptoms was explained by alexithymia, especially, difficulty in identifying feelings.

Conclusion: Results of current study show that alexithymia and emotional expressivity plat role in somatization symptoms. These findings support the assumption that somatization symptoms can be considered as a defect in the expression of emotions.

Key words: Alexithymia, Emotional expressivity, Somatization symptoms, Students

Funding: No grant has supported the present study.

Conflict of interest: None declared.

Ethical approval: The Ethics Committee of the Mohaghegh Ardabili University approved the study.

How to cite this article: Basharpoor S, Almardani someeh S, Shahmohammadzadeh Y. The Role of Alexithymia and Emotional Expressivity in Predicting Somatization Symptoms among Students of Mohaghegh Ardabili

University during 2014-2015.  J RafsanjanUniv Med Sci 2015 13(10): 961-72. [Farsi]