Correlation between type D personality and alexithymia among patients with depressive disorder / 四川精神卫生

ABSTRACT

ObjectiveTo explore the relationship between alexithymia and type D personality in patients with depressive disorder， so as to further enrich the psychological theory of depressive disorder. MethodsFrom May to August 2020， 100 inpatients in Psychosomatic Medicine Department of Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital who met the diagnostic criteria of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders， fifth edition （DSM-5） for depressive episode were selected as the research objects. Basic information， type D personality， alexithymia and depressive symptoms of the patients were investigated via self-compiled general demographic questionnaire， Type D Personality Scale 14 （DS-14）， Toronto Alexithymia Scale （TAS-20） and Patients' Health Questionnaire Depression Scale-9 item （PHQ-9）.Spearman correlation analysis was used to test the correlation between the scores of each scale. ResultsA total of 82 patients with depressive disorder completed the survey， of whom 75 patients （91.46%） were found to have type D personality， and 50 patients （60.98%） were found to have alexithymia. The total scores of TAS-20， DS-14 and PHQ-9 were positively correlated （r=0.276~0.354， P<0.05 or 0.01）. TAS-20 total score and dimensional scores were positively correlated with social inhibition dimension score in DS-14 （r=0.224~0.375， P<0.05 or 0.01）. TAS-20 total score and the scores of difficulty in identifying feelings and difficulty in describing feelings dimensions were positively correlated the negative affectivity dimension score in DS-14 （r=0.257~0.341， P<0.05 or 0.01）. ConclusionAlexithymia is closely related to type D personality in patients with depressive disorder.