Alexithymia and alcohol use disorders : a critical review
All human beings experience emotion. However a number of individuals have difficulties recognising, processing and regulating their emotions. This set of emotional "deficits' is classified as alexithymia. The prevalence rate of alexithymia in alcohol use disorders is between 45 and 67%. The objective of this paper is to review the published research on alexithymia and alcohol use, assess the methodological quality of this evidence, and draw the findings together to present a critical update on the relationship between alexithymia and alcohol use disorders. Yet, few research studies have comprehensively investigated alexithymia in alcohol use disorders, and a number of key issues still remain to be addressed in exploring the veracity of the link between alexithymia and alcohol use. For example, limited evidence exists regarding the association between alexithymia, alcohol consumption and severity of alcohol dependence. Furthermore, there is no current knowledge about the predictive utility of alexithymia in relation to more well researched and established psychological drinking constructs. Although alexithymia is often considered a risk factor for the development of alcohol use disorders, there is little evidence to support this notion. Given that alexithymia may have the potential to interfere with treatment outcomes, a better understanding of the role of alexithymia in alcohol use is needed.
Impact and interest:
Citation countsare sourced monthly fromand citation databases.
These databases contain citations from different subsets of available publications and different time periods and thus the citation count from each is usually different. Some works are not in either database and no count is displayed. Scopus includes citations from articles published in 1996 onwards, and Web of Science® generally from 1980 onwards.
Citations counts from theindexing service can be viewed at the linked Google Scholar™ search.
Full-text downloadsdisplays the total number of times this work’s files (e.g., a PDF) have been downloaded from QUT ePrints as well as the number of downloads in the previous 365 days. The count includes downloads for all files if a work has more than one.
|Item Type:||Journal Article|
|Keywords:||Alexithymia, Alcohol use disorder, Alcoholism, Affect regulation deficit, Critical review|
|Subjects:||Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification > PSYCHOLOGY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES (170000) > PSYCHOLOGY (170100) > Social and Community Psychology (170113)|
Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification > PSYCHOLOGY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES (170000) > PSYCHOLOGY (170100) > Health Clinical and Counselling Psychology (170106)
|Divisions:||Current > QUT Faculties and Divisions > Faculty of Health|
Current > Institutes > Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation
Current > Schools > School of Psychology & Counselling
|Copyright Owner:||Copyright 2008 Elsevier|
|Deposited On:||14 Apr 2009 13:39|
|Last Modified:||29 Feb 2012 23:44|
Repository Staff Only: item control page