Evaluation of alexithymia and clinical symptom severity in hospitalized Lebanese patients with schizophrenia

Alexithymia, defined as difficulty identifying and describing one’s emotions, is highly prevalent in patients with schizophrenia and strongly correlates with negative, affective, and cognitive symptoms. The main objective was to examine the correlations between alexithymia and the severity of clinical symptoms among patients with schizophrenia. The study included 101 inpatients diagnosed with schizophrenia according to DSM-5 criteria, recruited from the Psychiatric Hospital of the Cross in Lebanon. The Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) was used to measure alexithymia. SPSS version 27 was used to conduct the statistical analysis for this study. The results showed that 28.7% of subjects were alexithymic. The TAS‑20 total score was positively correlated with PANSS total score (r = 0.419, p < 0.001), as well as with positive symptoms (r = 0.331, p = 0.001), negative symptoms (r = 0.317, p = 0.001), and overall psychopathology symptoms (r = 0.361, p < 0.001). The results of regression analysis showed that the TAS-20 total score was associated with overall symptom severity (β = 1.06, 95% CI: 0.56–1.56, p < 0.001). This study demonstrated that alexithymia is significantly associated with the severity of schizophrenia symptoms in a stable inpatient population. These findings support the idea that alexithymia relates to the clinical expression of the disorder.