[Linkpost] Alexithymia — The Most Overlooked Emotional Health Problem

Alexithymia is a broad term to describe problems with feeling emotions. The authors claim:

What if I told you there was a condition that:

severely affects every 1 in 10 people, and up to 50% of people with a diagnosed mental disorder
negatively affects numerous aspects of physical health, mental wellness, general well-being, and quality of life
was studied for over 50 years with over 5000 published scientific papers on the topic

So Alexithymia is a potentially common condition that significantly increases the likelihood of mental health problems. Further, the inability to perceive emotions a priori is likely to contribute to mental health issues.

Although the authors do not assess the effectiveness of existing solutions, it seems plausible that effective treatments could be developed. A few reasons for optimism:

Unlike traditional mental health, where evaluation criteria are self-reported, in the case of alexithymia, better proxies might be built based on facial expressions.
Gendlin Focusing technique (and related things) have been found useful in this and adjacent communities.

Since Alexithymia is mentioned only once on the EA Forum, it might be overlooked by mental health-focused organizations. Given the abundance of scientific literature on the topic, it could be worthwhile to do an evaluation.

AFAIK, the authors are currently fundraising to develop the animiapp.com