Psychomaintenance aspects of alexithymia: relationship to medical outcome variables in a chronic respiratory illness population.

MMPI alexithymia scores and MMPI panic-fear personality scores were calculated for 202 adult asthmatic patients. Both sets of scores were shown to be related to the number of days rehospitalized. In addition, patients who scored high on both the alexithymia and panic-fear personality scales were judged by their attending physicians as being more severely ill than other patients. Both of these relationships were independent of the objective severity of the patient's asthma as indexed by longitudinal pulmonary functions. The study highlights the fact that alexithymia and panic-fear are two dimensions which may contribute to medical intractability in chronic asthma.