Exploring the association between oral health literacy and alexithymia

Low health literacy and alexithymia have separately been emphasized as barriers to patient-practitioner communication, but the association between the two concepts has not been explored.

To test the hypothesis that low oral health literacy and alexithymia are associated.

Adults (n=127) aged 21-80 years (56% women) participated in this cross-sectional study. Oral health literacy was assessed using the interview-based Adult Health Literacy Instrument for Dentistry (AHLID) with scores from 1-5. The self-administered Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) was used to assess three distinct TAS-20 factors and TAS-20 total score.

Significant negative correlations between AHLID scores and TAS-20 factors 2, 3 and TAS-20 total score were found. Regression analyses showed that TAS-20 factor 3, externally-oriented thinking (β=-0.21, SE=0.02, p=0.017), and TAS-20 total score (β=-0.18, SE=0.01, p=0.036) were significant predictors of AHLID level.

The hypothesis that low oral health literacy is associated with alexithymia was supported. This finding proposes that alexithymia may be considered as a possible factor for low oral health literacy. However, the correlations are not strong, and the results should be regarded as a first step to provide evidence with additional research on this topic being needed.