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A case of psoriasis: The skin that expresses the emotional silence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2020

C. Martinez Martinez
Affiliation:
Departamento Psiquiatría, Complejo Hospitalario León, Leon, Spain
M.D. Ortega Garcia
Affiliation:
Psychiatry, Complejo Hospitalario la Mancha Centro, Alcazar de San Juan, Spain
J.D. Martínez Manjarrés
Affiliation:
Psychiatry, Complejo Hospitalario San Luis, Palencia, Spain
M.A. Alonso de la Torre
Affiliation:
Psychiatry, Complejo Hospitalario León, Leon, Spain
P. Blanco del Valle
Affiliation:
Psychiatry, Hospital Clinico Universitario Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain
B. Arribas Simon
Affiliation:
Psychiatry, Hospital Clinico Universitario Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain
M.R. Gómez Martínez
Affiliation:
Psychiatry, Complejo Hospitalario León, Leon, Spain
C. Salazar Li
Affiliation:
Psychiatry, Complejo Hospitalario la Mancha Centro, Alcazar de San Juan, Spain
A. Agundez Modino
Affiliation:
Psychiatry, Hospital Clinico Universitario Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain

Abstract

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Introduction

Alexithymia is a term to describe a state of deficiency in understanding, processing, or describing emotions. It expresses the cognitive-emotional state of vulnerable subjects who prone to suffer from psychosomatic illnesses. It’s characterized by difficulties in relationship and emptiness of feelings. It has been incriminated in genesis and maintenance of various psychosomatic pathologies, included psoriasis. Psychological stress is important in onset and exacerbation of psoriasis. We assume hypothesis that emotions that cannot be expressed through the appropriate symbolic language will be expressed through a symbolic somatic symptom.

Objectives

A case study of psoriasis in a woman of 27 years without a previous psychiatric history. She was treated jointly by the service of psychiatry and dermatology. Methodology: We performed a detailed history in the course of the disease, summarizing vital changes and outstanding events of her lifetime in the different vital areas (family, work, school and sex life).

Results

From the comprehensive revision of the ailments and pathobiography we can establish a clear relationship between physical-psychological symptoms.

Conclusions

Skin is an envelope that represents the boundary line between body-psyche. Skin and psyche interact in many ways. The skin reacts to feelings and perceptions. Psychosomatic patients feel extreme anxiety when they have to cope with separation and merger situations. They experience these situations as if they were to lose their physical limit. Broadly speaking, because of their alexithymia, they cannot process a painful emotion properly, and though they will express it through somatisation disorders and the development of diseases. In the case of our patient, the skin verbalizes her emotional silence.

Type
P03-566
Copyright
Copyright © European Psychiatric Association 2011
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