The association of alexithymia with chronic heart and lung diseases
Abstract
Introduction: Alexithymia is manifested by limited abilities to identify and express emotions and is a possible risk factor for the onset and treatment of the disease.
Objective: To determine the dependence of the presence of alexithymia in patients with chronic lung and heart diseases.
Methodology and results: 100 respondents aged 35 to 75 participated in the research, 50% of whom were being treated for chronic lung diseases, and 50% for chronic heart diseases. After filling out the Twenty-Point Toronto Scale (TAS-20) questionnaire, the degree of alexithymia was determined. Applying the chi-square test for independence, it was determined that the presence of alexithymia and chronic heart and lung diseases are dependent characteristics (p>0.0005), a significantly larger number of respondents with established alexithymia are treated for chronic lung diseases. Using the chi-square test, it was shown that the presence of alexithymia and the gender of the subject are not dependent characteristics, while the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test of significance was used to analyze the dependence of alexithymia and the age of the subject, which determined that there is a statistically significant difference in the age of the subjects who have and do not have alexithymia (p<0.05).
Conclusion: In this paper, we determined that alesithymia is a more significant risk factor for the occurrence of chronic impairment of lung function compared to heart disease.
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