Alexithymia refers to difficulties identifying and describing one's emotions. Growing evidence suggests that alexithymia is a key transdiagnostic risk factor. Despite its clinical importance, the etiology of alexithymia is largely unknown. The present study employs meta-analytic methods to summarize findings on the role of one hypothesized antecedent of adult alexithymia, namely child maltreatment. We obtained effect size estimates from 99 independent samples reported in 78 unique sources that reported both child maltreatment history and adult levels of alexithymia. These studies involved a total of 36,141 participants. Using correlation coefficients as our effect size index, we found that child maltreatment was positively related to overall adult alexithymia (r = .23 [.19, .27]). Notably, emotional abuse (r = .18 [.13, .23]), emotional neglect (r = .21 [.16, .26]), and physical neglect (r = .18 [.15, .22]) were the strongest predictors. Effects were moderated by gender, affiliation with clinical versus nonclinical samples, and publication status. Overall results were robust to publication bias and the presence of outliers. These findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the complex connection between different types of child maltreatment and alexithymia, providing greater insight into the early environmental influences on alexithymia. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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虐待儿童和述情障碍：荟萃分析综述。

述情障碍是指难以识别和描述自己的情绪。越来越多的证据表明述情障碍是一个关键的跨诊断危险因素。尽管其临床重要性，述情障碍的病因在很大程度上仍不清楚。本研究采用荟萃分析方法来总结关于成人述情障碍的一种假设前因（即虐待儿童）的作用的发现。我们从 78 个独特来源报告的 99 个独立样本中获得了效应大小估计值，这些样本报告了儿童虐待史和成人述情障碍水平。这些研究总共涉及 36,141 名参与者。使用相关系数作为我们的效应大小指数，我们发现虐待儿童与成人述情障碍总体呈正相关（r = .23 [.19, .27]）。值得注意的是，情感虐待 (r = .18 [.13, .23])、情感忽视 (r = .21 [.16, .26]) 和身体忽视 (r = .18 [.15, .22])是最强的预测因素。效果受性别、临床与非临床样本的隶属关系以及发表状态的影响。总体结果对于发表偏倚和异常值的存在是稳健的。这些发现有助于更细致地了解不同类型的儿童虐待与述情障碍之间的复杂联系，从而更深入地了解早期环境对述情障碍的影响。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2023 APA，保留所有权利）。