Alexithymia in people with tattoos

Introduction:
Tattoos are a form of body modifications. Alexithymia is a complex personality structure that includes emotional and cognitive deficits such as difficulty in recognizing and describing feelings.

Aim:
To assess the prevalence of alexithymia among tattooed individuals. Moreover, we aimed to check if the type of tattoo is related to alexithymia.

Material and methods:
This was a cross-sectional survey, conducted on 403 individuals from Poland. 200 of them had tattoos and were assigned to the study group, and 203 of them had no tattoos and were assigned to the control group.

Results:
Most respondents (24%) had one tattoo. Most tattoos (29.8%) were situated on forearms and palms, had a plant motif (21.8%) and were done to express personality of the respondents (20.7%). In the research group 80 (19.9%) respondents were classified as alexithymic ones. Out of them, 47 (11.7%) individuals had tattoos and 33 (8.9%) belonged to the non-tattooed group. 35 (17.5%) respondents with non-verbal tattoos were screened as alexithymic while 12 (6%) individuals with verbal, personal tattoos were classified as alexithymic ones (p < 0.05). 22 (11%) respondents who did their tattoos for psychological reasons and 25 (12.5%) individuals who did their tattoos for aesthetic reasons were classified as alexithymic (NS).

Conclusions:
Subjects with tattoos should be regarded as a group with increased prevalence of alexithymia. Individuals with non-verbal tattoos had a higher tendency to be screened as alexithymic as alexithymic ones. Motivation for getting the tattoo does not seem to have a significant impact on the prevalence of alexithymia.