Alexithymia in substance abuse: relationship to depression.

Recently Giannini reported that substance abusers were significantly higher alexithymic scorers than healthy volunteers but that the alexithymia scores correlated positively with scores of mood states on the five-factor model for healthy volunteers not but for substance abusers. This suggested that researchers should not aggregate all substance abusers into one group. To check Giannini's suggestions, further examinations including mood changes in substance abusers seem needed.