ArticleFrontiers in psychiatry2020
Using the Body When There Are No Words for Feelings: Alexithymia and Somatization in Self-Harming Adolescents.
Article in Frontiers in psychiatry, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- A meta-analysis of influencing factors of non-suicidal self-injury behavior in adolescents with depression.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Pooled it
- Resilience revisited: a systematic review and synthesis of Non-Suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI) and its relation with resilience.BMC psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Article
- Patterns of Cognitive-Emotional Responses to Online Body Shaming and Pathological Behavior Odds Among Adolescents (11-17).Scandinavian journal of psychology · 2026Article
- Childhood maltreatment and non-suicidal self-injury in college students:Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Evidence of Embodiment-based changes in older Adult Language.Psychological research · 2025Review
- Suicidal risk and psychopathological profiles in adolescents with neurodevelopmental disorders: an Italian multicentric study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Suicidal ideation in Chinese patients with chronic schizophrenia: prevalence, clinical correlates, and relationship with alexithymia.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2024Article
- Optimism, Resilience, and General Self-Efficacy Predict Lower Somatic Burden during the COVID-19 Pandemic.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Alexithymia and peer victimisation: interconnected pathways to adolescent non-suicidal self-injury.BJPsych open · 2024Article
- Comparison of the effects of in-person and internet-delivered mindfulness-based stress reduction on the burden of psychosomatic symptoms in nurses.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Predictors of non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents with depressive disorder: the role of alexithymia, childhood trauma, and body investment.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Case report: Short-term psychotherapy for alexithymia in a patient with generalized anxiety disorder.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- The emotional surge: in-depth qualitative exploration of rumination and emotional turbulence in non-suicidal self-injurers.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Poverty, Somatisation Tendency and Potency in Low-Income Adolescent Groups of India and Israel: Explorations from the Field.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Symptomatic, Alexithymic, and Suicidality-Related Features in Groups of Adolescent Self-Harmers: A Case-Control Study.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2023Article
- Externalising Behaviours, Impulsivity, Alexithymia, and Emotional Dysregulation in Adolescents' Suicidality.Clinical neuropsychiatry · 2023Article
- Self- but not other-mentalizing moderates the association between BPD symptoms and somatic complaints in community-dwelling adolescents.Psychology and psychotherapy · 2022Article
- Somatic, Emotional and Behavioral Symptomatology in Children during COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Children's and Parents' Alexithymia.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- A Pre-Adolescent and Adolescent Clinical Sample Study about Suicidal Ideation, Suicide Attempt, and Self-Harming.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The present case-control study aimed to investigate the relationship between alexithymia and somatic complaints in the psychopathological setting of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). A clinical sample of 134 adolescents (115 females; 85.5%) from 12 to 18 years old engaging in NSSI was compared with a control group of 243 high-school students (157 females; 64.6%) from 13 to 18 years old. Data were collected using two questionnaires: The Youth Self-Report 11-18 and the 20 Toronto Alexithymia Scale. In both cases and controls, the presence of somatization and alexithymia was associated with more severe psychopathological problems. Analyses were conducted to explore the association between somatic disorders and alexithymia. In the clinical group, somatic complaints were reported by 95.9% of alexithymic individuals, whereas only 44.3% of alexithymic adolescents reported somatic complaints. A one-way relationship emerged between somatization and alexithymia: while alexithymia would seem to be a factor associated with self-injury, somatic disorders were strongly associated with alexithymia, but not necessarily with self-injury. Among the self-harming adolescents, those with both alexithymia and somatization had a more severe psychopathological picture than the individuals with alexithymia but no somatization. This would suggest that, in the setting of NSSI, greater difficulty with identifying feelings is associated with somatization, and alexithymia would be an attribute common to self-harming behavior and somatization, both of which are characterized by the body being used to express psychological and emotional problems. Future research could further investigate alexithymia in self-harming individuals, in relation to any presence or absence of somatic disorders, with longitudinal assessments on any differences in their manifestation of self-injury and its psychopathological correlates.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.