Alexithymia in obese patients seeking surgical Treatment: comparison between Toronto Structered Interview for Alexithtmia and 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale”

Recent studies highlight the need to investigate the presence of psychological factors in obese patients because they show an influence on the weight loss after bariatric surgery. Alexithymia could represent a psychological risk factor for the outcome of the surgical treatment, although actually the relation between alexithymia and obesity is uncertain. The literature on alexhithymia measurement claims the importance of a multimethod assessment. The first aim is to assess alexithymia in severly obese patients by using a multimethod measurement (self-report and interview). Further aim is to investigate the relationship between alexithymia and body weight. Forty-five severly obese patients (30 Female; mean age 42,6; mean body weight 122,13 Kg) underwent the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA), which represents the first clinically structured interview. Significant discordance was found between the two alexithymia measures: TSIA scores highlighted a greater level of alexithymia compared with self-report scores. Furthermore only TSIA total score was significantly related to Body Weight (p= .03; r= .34). We can hypothesize that the TSIA is a more sensitive instrument in evaluating alexithymia: minimizing obese patients’ negation tendency. A multimethod measurement seems useful to have clinically relevant information on our sample.