Alexithymia, resilience and paranormal beliefs in an elderly institutionalized center

Abstract

Alexithymia refers to the difficulty to understand and identify feelings and those of others. The process of adapting a residential facility is one of the stressful situations older people may face. In order to overcome this situation, resilience is critical and even there are people who seek support in religion or paranormal beliefs. In this paper, we studied the relationship between alexithymia, resilience and paranormal beliefs in a group of 35 seniors (21 women) aged between 66 and 95 years old in an institutionalized center. The instruments used were the TAS-20 Scale in order to assess alexithymia, the CD-RISC for evaluating resilience and the Enhanced Paranormal Beliefs Scale. Among main findings, it must be emphasized that subjects with greater difficulty identifying feelings are those with less personal control and less belief about extraordinary life forms; subjects with greater personal control had higher belief about those extraordinary life forms. Professional applications that can be launched in elderly institutionalized centers are discussed.