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Alexithymia and cognitive behaviour therapy outcome for subthreshold depression
V Spek1, I Nyklícek, P Cuijpers
1Department of Medical Psychology, Center of Research on Psychology in Somatic diseases (CoRPS), Tilburg University, Tilburg, the Netherlands. v.r.m.spek@uvt.nl
Objective:
Alexithymia is hypothesized to be a stable trait that hinders favourable outcomes of psychotherapy. We tested two hypotheses: i) alexithymia is not stable but changes along with a change in depressive symptoms and ii) pretreatment alexithymia hinders gaining benefits from psychotherapy.
Method:
A total of 201 participants (mean age = 54 years, SD = 4.4) with subthreshold depression were treated with cognitive behaviour therapy. Outcome was defined as the change in depressive symptoms from pretreatment to post-treatment and to 1-year follow-up.
Results:
Changes in depressive symptoms were significantly correlated with changes in alexithymia. Baseline alexithymia scores were not correlated with treatment outcome.
Conclusion:
Alexithymia is less stable than hypothesized: changes in alexithymia were associated with change in depressive symptoms. Furthermore, alexithymia does not hinder cognitive behaviour therapy outcome.
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