Relationship between anger and pruritus perception in chronic idiopathic urticaria

Objective: There is evidence that chronic idiopathic urticaria (CIU) is associated with personality based difficulties in emotional regulation as measured by the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (Maniaci et al., 2006). In alexithymic individuals inner tension and psychophysiological arousal associated with negative affects cannot be reduced efficiently by (verbally) expressing and disclosing inner feelings (Pennebaker et al.,, 1987) and this difficulty can contribute to an increased emotional distress and an ontogenetically earlier behavioural-expressive manifestation of affect (Taylor et al., 1997). On the basis of th…