Psychosomatic medicine
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Psychosomatic medicine · Jan 2007
Alexithymia in chronic fatigue syndrome: associations with momentary, recall, and retrospective measures of somatic complaints and emotions.
The relationship between alexithymia and real-time momentary symptom assessments has not been reported. This cross-sectional study hypothesized that alexithymia would be a predictor of somatic symptoms using three different types of symptom measurement (momentary, recall, and retrospective) in the medically unexplained illness of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). In addition, it was hypothesized that negative affect would be a significant mediator of the relationship between alexithymia and somatic symptoms. Finally, the relation of alexithymia to physical illness attribution (a CFS illness predictor) was explored. ⋯ Based on assessments of real-time and retrospectively measured symptoms, these data provided only modest support for the alexithymia construct as a predictor of somatic symptoms in people with CFS.