[Prevalence of alexithymia in a general population. Study in 183 "normal" subjects and in 263 students]

The prevalence of alexithymia has been studied in two groups of healthy subjects, 183 normals and 263 university students. In the normal group the alexithymia was rated using the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) and in the student group the alexithymia was rated using the revised version of the TAS (Twenty-items TAS or TAS-20). Using our cutoff scores (> or = 73 for the TAS, > or = 56 for the TAS-20), the prevalence in the normal group and the student group were respectively 23% and 17.1%.