Psicossomática, dor e alexitimia: a prevalência de alexitimia nos sujeitos com dor crônica e transtorno psicossomático

Abstract

Currently, Psychosomatics is considered a large field of knowledge to be further explored. Psychosomatics logic makes no distinction between body and psyche, but understands and studies as an integrated unit, complex and interdependent. In the field of literature, alexithymia is considered today as one of the favorable situations, which appears to increase vulnerability to disease and pain experiences. By the fact of symbolic communication be limited, alexithymia was described as probably a particular risk factor in psychosomatic subjects. Objective: to study the correlation between chronic pain and alexithymia in psychosomatic subjects. Methodology: this is a descriptive study of quantitative and qualitative analysis character content. 40 subjects were analyzed in a correlational study. The survey was the Pain Clinic, attached to the Hospital de Base of São José do Rio Preto SP. Subjects were selected according to the criteria: 1. Age between 18 and 65 years, of both sexes; 2. Pain outpatient clinic with a complaint of non-neuropathic pain and psychosomatics disease, for the period from July 2017 to September 2018; 3. Subjects were invited randomly, were accepted volunteer. Anamnesis interview was held, and applied the instruments: 1. Toronto Alexithymia Scale TAS-20; 2. Generic Questionnaire for the evaluation of quality of life (SF-36), 3. Beck Depression inventory and 4. Brief Pain inventory. Data were analyzed on the basis of the theoretical framework of psychoanalytic psychosomatics and quantitative information were analyzed by descriptive statistics. Results: In demographic analysis, 67% are women, the marital status of the subject is most stable/married 63%, with a mean age in the range of 49.9 years. In this sample, 42.5% have between 5 and 8 years of schooling; 27.5% of the subjects are unemployed and 27.5% receives some benefit from the Government. There was positive correlation and significance values between pain and alexithymia, which is prevalent in 65% of the subjects. Pain has been identified as a risk factor for worsening of quality of life in all areas; The intensity of the pain in the General activities of life, according to the perception of the subject, it was 8.12 ±1.13. The greatest impact of pain is observed, the potential labor, 1.55 ±8.72; High scores of alexithymia, with 75.66 ±8.08 have been identified. Among the three factors assessed, the regarding difficulty identifying feelings and distinguish them from the body sensations, represented the highest average 28.73 ±4.16, followed by the factor that corresponds to the difficulty describing feelings to others, with 27.93 ±4.2. The presence of positive correlation between the perception of pain and depressive symptoms (moderate and severe) (p = 0.39) of significance. Conclusion: under the gaze of the psychoanalytic literature in line with other studies, it is possible to identify subjects with alexithymia, presented greater vulnerability to the perception of pain, depressive symptoms and onset of psychosomatic illnesses.