Assessing Alexithymia: the first application of TSIA on obese patients

Background: Alexithymia is associated to physical and psychological diseases including obesity. The most widely used instrument to assess the alexithymia construct is the TAS- 20, which shows the limitations of a self-report test. To overcome these limitations, the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA) was developed as an interview-based method. The aim of the study is to assess alexithymia levels in obese patients using a multimethod measurement to evaluate both possible differences between the two instruments and their relationship with the obesity condition and psychophysical symptomatology. Methods: A total of 54 obese patients (12 women; mean BMI: 42.56±6.16), seeking surgical treatment, were enrolled in a Centre of Excellence in Bariatric Surgery in Latina. The subjects completed: TSIA, TAS-20, SCL-90-R and a sociodemographic questionnaire. Weight was measured on-site. Results: Data analysis showed a positive association between TAS-20 and TSIA (r=.289; p=.034). However, only TSIA scores were positively related to body weight (r=.393; p=.003) whereas TAS-20 was positively related to global severity index (GSI, SCL-90-R) (r=.438; p=.001). The set of linear regression models performed showed that only TSIA total score was a significant predictor of body weight (B=.944, p=.012) whereas using the TAS-20 total score a predictive effect on body weight did not emerge. Conclusions: The findings showed a different association between body weight and alexithymia according to instrument employed to evaluate alexithymia. This finding supports the importance of a multimethod assessment in some clinical conditions.