Interaction between emotions and somatic complaints in children who did or did not seek medical care (original) (raw)
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Somatic complaints and health care use in children: Mood, emotion awareness and sense of coherence
Social science & medicine (1982), 2006
In this study, we compared several aspects of the emotional functioning of schoolchildren reporting very few somatic complaints (n=59), schoolchildren reporting many somatic complaints (n=61), and a clinical group of children with functional abdominal complaints who visited the outpatient clinical of the VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam (n=33). The children had an average age of 10.6 years. We studied whether general moods (happiness, anger, fear, and sadness), symptoms of depressiveness, emotion awareness, and sense of coherence contributed to group classification. Eighty-three percent of the schoolchildren reporting very few somatic complaints were identified correctly on the basis of better emotional functioning. However, there was little difference in the emotional functioning of schoolchildren with many somatic complaints and that of the clinical group. We concluded that the variables studied are valuable for differentiating children who are troubled by somatic complai...
Emotions and self-esteem as indicators of somatic complaints in children
Infant and Child Development, 2006
The literature on somatic complaints in children without a clear physical medical cause often demonstrates connections with various psychological factors, such as negative emotions and problems handling them, poor self-image, and coping potential. We entered these elements into a structural model to elucidate the relationships among them and tested it on 330 children (mean age 10 years and 9 months). The results showed that mood balance contributed most to the prediction of self-reported somatic complaints. Moreover, mood (in combination with anxiety and depression problems) had an indirect impact on children's somatic complaints by influencing self-esteem. The influence and position of coping was less clear. The results are discussed in terms of the 'symptom perception theory'.
Psychology & Health, 2009
Children with many somatic complaints seem to report problems with emotion identification and communication ('alexithymia'). The aim of this study was to verify whether children with somatic complaints do indeed show signs of alexithymia. We compared 35 children (M age ¼ 10.99, SD ¼ 13 months) with many somatic complaints with 34 children (M age ¼ 11.03, SD ¼ 12 months) reporting few complaints on the basis of a self-report alexithymia scale and tasks that require the skill to identify and communicate emotions: an emotional attention task, a structured interview about own emotions, and a mixed-emotion task. Children were also asked about the intensity of the reported emotions. Compared to children with few complaints, children with many complaints seemed to have higher self-reports of alexithymia. However, these results were explained by difficulty in communicating negative internal states and experiencing indefinable internal states, rather than difficulty in identifying emotions. In addition, children with many complaints reported higher intensities of fear and sadness. The children did not differ in their attention to emotions or causes of emotions. Children with many somatic complaints more often described previous emotional experiences and showed better abilities in identifying multiple emotions. Children with many somatic complaints thus show more negative emotional processing, but the alexithymia-hypothesis was unsupported.
Alexithymia, Emotion, and Somatic Complaints
Journal of Personality, 2001
Alexithymia, by definition, involves difficulties in identifying and describing emotions and has been assumed to be associated with somatization (i.e., a tendency to express psychological distress in somatic rather than emotional form). Empirical research so far, however, has produced no convincing evidence that alexithymia is more associated with somatic complaints than with emotional complaints or that alexithymia correlates with somatic complaints when negative affect is controlled for. In the present study, alexithymia, as measured by the TAS-20, showed no association with somatic complaints in a community sample of 137 individuals when trait anxiety and depression were controlled. Alexithymia did correlate negatively with positive affect, and positively with negative affect. The former association, however, was much more robust, whereas the latter association was found mainly on subjective trait measures of negative affect (as distinct from state measures and more objective trait measures derived from daily recordings during an 8-week period). It is suggested that the association between alexithymia and lack of positive affect deserves more attention in future research.
Childhood Emotional Maltreatment and Somatic Complaints: The Mediating Role of Alexithymia
Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, 2013
The relationship between childhood emotional maltreatment (CEM) and adverse health-related outcomes is well-documented in the literature. However, mediators of such relationships are not fully understood. The present study examined alexithymia as a potential mediator of the relationship between CEM and somatic complaints in young adults. A sample of 270 undergraduates completed self-report questionnaires assessing CEM, alexithymia, and somatic complaints. All variables were moderately intercorrelated. Controlling for the effects of sex, path analyses supported a model in which alexithymia partially mediated the relationship between CEM and somatic complaints. This study provides further evidence for the occurrence and lasting sequelae of CEM in a sample of young adults. It also illuminates the role of emotions in the relationship between CEM and somatic complaints, suggesting that interventions emphasizing affective education may lessen somatic complaints. Individual differences in CEM and other mediators warrant further investigation.
Somatic complaints, emotional awareness and maladjustment in schoolchildren
Anales De Pediatría (english Edition), 2015
Introduction: Somatic complaints are common in childhood. Research has shown their relationship with emotional awareness and maladjustment. The study had three objectives: 1) to analyse the prevalence of somatic complaints; 2) to explore the relationships between the variables evaluated: somatic complaints, differentiating emotions, verbal sharing of emotions, not hiding emotions, body awareness, attending to others' emotions, analysis of emotions, and personal, social, family, and school maladjustments; and 3) to identify predictors of somatic complaints. Patients and methods: The study included a total of 1134 randomly selected schoolchildren of both sexes between 10 and 12 years old (M = 10.99; SD = 0.88). The Somatic Complaint List, Emotional Awareness Questionnaire, and Self-Reported Multifactor Test of Childhood Adaptation were used to gather information. Results: The results showed that the prevalence of somatic complaints was 90.2%, with fatigue, headache and stomachache being the most frequent. Dizziness and headache were more common in girls, and the frequency of complaints decreases with age. Somatic complaints are negatively related to emotional awareness, and positively related to maladjustment. The variables that contribute the most to the prediction of somatic complaints are personal maladjustment (25.1%) and differentiating emotions (2.5%). Conclusions: The study shows that personal maladjustment is the best predictor of somatic complaints; the more emotional awareness and better adapted the child, the fewer somatic complaints they lodge. Childhood is a stage with significant physical discomfort.
PLOS ONE, 2017
symptoms mediated the relationship between difficulties in identifying feelings and functional impairment. Finally, it was showed that alexithymia facet of difficulty in identifying feelings contributed in large part to the prediction of the somatic symptomatology (b = 0.978, p < 0.001; R 2 = 0.164, F(5, 350) = 10.32, p < 0.001). Conclusions Findings from this study provide evidence that a higher frequency of somatic symptoms is associated with functional disabilities and alexithymic facets in school-aged children.
An alexithymia questionnaire for children: Factorial and concurrent validation results
Personality and Individual Differences, 2006
Alexithymia refers to a limited ability to identify and communicate oneÕs feelings, which has been frequently associated with physical health complaints and negative moods. The many studies that have been conducted with adults have identified three core factors in alexithymia: Difficulty Identifying Feelings, Difficulty Describing Feelings and Externally-Oriented thinking. This three-factor structure of alexithymia was also identified in children of two age groups (740 children recruited from primary schools (mean age 11 years) and secondary schools (mean age 13 years)), although the factor Externally-Oriented Thinking showed low factor loadings and a low reliability. The predictive value of the questionnaire was also satisfactory. Consistent with the adult literature, the results showed that the factors Difficulty Identifying Feelings and Difficulty Describing Feelings contributed to the prediction of self-reported somatic complaints in children, but the factor Externally-Oriented Thinking failed to do so. Directions for future research aiming at measuring alexithymia are discussed.
Alexithymia in children with medically unexplained symptoms: a systematic review
Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 2019
Objective: Adult research investigating the link between alexithymia and medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) has found a significant relationship between increased alexithymia and MUS. This difficulty in expressing emotions is likely to begin in childhood so the objective of this paper is to present a quantitative review of studies focussing on the association between MUS and alexithymia in children. Methods: Databases were searched with predefined terms relating to alexithymia and MUS in children (0-17 years). Two reviewers independently assessed abstracts, extracted data and undertook quality analyses. Systematic review methods were used in accordance with Cochrane guidelines. Results: Ten studies met the criteria for inclusion in the review. Seven of the eight studies which focused on a comparison between children with MUS and healthy controls, found higher levels of self-reported alexithymia in the children with MUS. However, in the two studies where children were asked to complete tasks that objectively measure alexithymia, significant differences were not found. Results of studies comparing alexithymia in children with MUS and children with medical/psychiatric controls were inconsistent; there was some evidence of increased anxiety and depression in young people with alexithymia and MUS but inconsistency of measures across studies makes drawing conclusions difficult. Conclusion: There is preliminary evidence that children with MUS have significantly higher levels of alexithymia than controls based on self-report measures; however, this finding was not replicated in objective tasks of alexithymia. Future studies should include validated tasks that objectively measure emotion recognition abilities and focus on possible mediating factors such as neurodevelopmental and mental health difficulties.