Evaluating the Components of Alexithymia in Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

This study aimed to evaluate the differences in alexithymia components between patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and normal individuals.

In this ex-post facto study, 23 obsessive-compulsive outpatients’ selected by available sampling method and 22 personnel of the same hospitals (Taft Comprehensive Psychiatric Hospital, Imam Ali, Shahid Rahnemoon, and Baghayipoor Clinics) were selected as a control group in 2015 in Yazd, Iran. Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive and Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 were used in this study.

Data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). The results showed that patients with OCD were significantly different from the control group in the total alexithymia score (F=7.232, P =0.01). However, both groups had significant differences only in the subscale of difficulty in identifying feelings.

It can be concluded that both groups had significant differences in the total alexithymia score and one of its subscales