Merckelbach Harald, Prins Chinouk, Boskovic Irena, Niesten Isabella, À Campo Joost
Forensic Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, the Netherlands.
Radix Forensic Outpatient Clinic, Mondriaan, Heerlen, the Netherlands.
Scand J Psychol. 2018 Apr;59(2):192-197. doi: 10.1111/sjop.12427. Epub 2018 Jan 19.
The traditional interpretation of symptom over-reporting is that it indicates malingering. We explored a different perspective, namely that over-reporting of eccentric symptoms is related to deficits in articulating internal experiences (i.e., alexithymia). Given that alexithymia has been linked to sleep problems and that fatigue may fuel inattentive responding to symptom lists, we administered measures of alexithymia (TAS-20) and symptom over-reporting (SIMS), but also sleep quality (SLEEP-50) to forensic psychiatric outpatients (n = 40) and non-forensic participants (n = 40). Forensic patients scored significantly higher on all three indices than non-forensic participants. In the total sample as well as in subsamples, over-reporting correlated positively and significantly with alexithymia, with rs being in the 0.50-0.65 range. Sleep problems were also related to over-reporting, but in the full sample and in the forensic subsample, alexithymia predicted variance in over-reporting over and above sleep problems. Although our study is cross-sectional in nature, its results indicate that alexithymia as a potential source of over-reporting merits systematic research.
对症状过度报告的传统解释是，这表明存在诈病行为。我们探索了一个不同的观点，即怪异症状的过度报告与表达内心体验的缺陷（即述情障碍）有关。鉴于述情障碍与睡眠问题有关，且疲劳可能导致对症状清单的注意力不集中反应，我们对法医精神病门诊患者（n = 40）和非法医参与者（n = 40）进行了述情障碍测量（TAS - 20）、症状过度报告测量（SIMS）以及睡眠质量测量（SLEEP - 50）。法医患者在所有三项指标上的得分均显著高于非法医参与者。在总样本以及子样本中，过度报告与述情障碍呈显著正相关，相关系数rs在0.50 - 0.65范围内。睡眠问题也与过度报告有关，但在全样本和法医子样本中，述情障碍在睡眠问题之外还能预测过度报告的差异。尽管我们的研究本质上是横断面研究，但其结果表明，述情障碍作为过度报告的一个潜在来源值得进行系统研究。
