Alexithymia in schizophrenia: Association with psychopathology, emotional intelligence and cognitive emotion regulation

Alexithymia is a cognitive-afective construct that primarily describes deicits in the identifying and describing one's own feelings. Schizophrenic patients show heightened alexithymia. The present study was designed to assess alexithymia in schizophrenic patients and to ind out to what extent alexithymia is associated with psychopathology, emotional intelligence and cognitive emotion regulation strategies. This was a cross-sectional hospital based descriptive study carried out at Institute of Mental Health and Hospital, Agra. 30 patients with schizophrenia and 30 persons in the control group served as the study sample. Toronto Alexithymia Scale, Multidimensional Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Scale-Revised, Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire administered on each participant. Additionally, Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale was administered on patients group. The results revealed signiicantly heightened alexithymia in schizophrenic patients which was positively associated with psychopathology and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies; negatively associated with emotional intelligence and adaptive emotion regulation strategies. In conclusion the assessment of alexithymia in schizophrenic patients may be important for both understanding the psychopathology as well as management of cognitive-afective deicits.