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ALEXITHYMIA AS A PREDICTOR OF PSYCHOSOMATIC DISORDERS: LINGUISTIC ASPECTS
Abstract
The problems of pain diagnosis and treatment through the use of language are really acute all over the world nowadays. The quality of diagnosis and treatment directly depends on a person's ability to accurately define it. Verbal communication is one of the most powerful tools in psychology, and this tool has speech and language specific features. In Russia there is a lack of instruments for the evaluation of pain and other sensations, especially in patients with alexithymia [1] who often have psychosomatic disorders. Many issues related to the phenomenon of alexithymia are still problematic. There is no unambiguous interpretation of the concept itself, its nature, the mechanisms of formation and development. To determine the level of alexithymia, there are different scales and questionnaires: TAS (Toronto Alexithymia Scale), BVQ (Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire) etc. Semantic model of speech of patients is characterized by the moderate or severe deficit at different stages: the stage of inner speech, the formation of a deep-syntactic structure, the stage of verbal expression. So, patients with alexithymia have a deficiency in cognitive processing of emotional information as they pay attention to the physical state, while the psychological state remains at an unconscious level. As a result, the negative emotions are not expressed and appear as various somatic symptoms, such as eating disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, bronchial asthma, diabetes, musculoskeletal diseases, fibromyalgia, hypertension, coronary heart disease, neurotic disorders, chronic pain syndromes, stress disorders, depression etc. Thus, different types of limits in verbalization of emotions and feelings lead to the development of various somatic disorders in patients. The paper describes the connection between alexithymia and psychosomatic disorders and discusses the linguistic aspects of this problem. The collection of anamnesis and complaints in alexithymic patient causes many difficulties in everyday medical practice. Medical specialists need specific diagnostic tools for such patients batteries of tests and questionnaires with a set of word descriptors and phrasal descriptors for different types of negative sensations, especially pain. This project is launched at Kazan Federal University by the multidisciplinary group of scientists including neurologists and linguists.
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