Social and emotional loneliness in adults, with relationship between somatic symptoms and alexithymia

Loneliness, which is expressed as the feeling that exists as a result of the incompatibility between the relationship a person desires and has, can occur at different times and situations as a result of certain life events. While the lack of closeness and close relationships is described as emotional loneliness, the lack of social networks is described as social loneliness. Loneliness is considered multidimensionally. One of the most important elements in maintaining interpersonal relationships and ensuring integrity is emotions. On the other hand, since recognizing and expressing emotions has been a problem throughout history, the concept of alexithymia has emerged. As a matter of fact, expressing unresolved psychological problems and emotions through somatic symptoms has been defined as somatization. The emotions, thoughts, behaviors and physiological reactions of the individual, who is a biopsychosocial being, function as a whole in establishing relationships, therefore disruption of integrity can be a threat to the maintenance of balanced and healthy relationships. The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between types of social and emotional loneliness and alexithymia and somatic symptoms of adults aged 18-42. Our research, carried out with the relational screening model, was evaluated by examining the data of 259 women and 129 men in Istanbul and a total of 388 participants. "Sociodemographic Information Form", "SELSA Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale", "Toronto Alexithymia Scale 20" and "Bradford Physical Symptom Inventory" were used as data collection tools in the research. SPSS 26.0 package software was used to analyze the data obtained. Pearson correlation was applied to examine the relationship between variables; Multiple regression analysis was applied to examine the predictive relationship between the variables with which correlation was detected. To compare loneliness, alexithymia and somatization scores in terms of sociodemographic variables, parametric measurements were preferred due to the number of samples. Independent samples t-test was applied to compare paired groups. For comparisons with variables involving more than two groups, one-way ANOVA was applied. A normality test was performed to ensure the suitability of the comparison tests. For normality testing, the skewness and kurtosis values of the scale score averages were examined. In the study, the significance level was taken as 0.05 and 0.001. As a result of the research, a significant relationship was found between types of social and emotional loneliness and alexithymic features and somatic symptoms.