Relationship Between Health Anxiety and Alexithymia in an Iranian Sample

AbstractThe aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between alexithymia and health anxiety in a sample of Iranian participants. The sample consisted of 226 male and female students in Tehran who completed the 20 item Toronto Alexythemia Scale (TAS) developed by Bagby, Parker and Taylor (1994), the 28 item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) developed by Goldberg (1972) and the 18 item Short Health Anxiety Inventory (SHAI) developed by Salkovskis, etal. (2002). Results showed that scores on alexithymia correlated significantly with scores on health anxiety. This significance was held when scores on depression, anxiety and somatic symptoms (as measured by GHQ) were controlled. It was further found that one of the subscales of SHAI, namely difficulty in identifying feelings (DIF), as well as somatic symptoms, significantly predicted reported health anxiety scores in male and female participants. It is argued that undifferentiated feelings exist in alexithymia causing physiological arousal. But because these individuals have difficulty in identifying, differentiating and regulating these feelings and thus associating them with related somatic symptoms, this physiological arousal remains unabated and is expressed in terms of health anxiety