[Beyond depression: assessing personality disorders, alexithymia and socio-emotional alienation in patients with HIV infection].

: HIV infection is commonly associated with emotional and cognitive disorders that recognize both causes of an organic nature (related to the virus itself) and non-organic factors (emotional stress resulting from HIV diagnosis, social stigma and continued risk behaviour such as alcohol or drug abuse). Most of the literature has focused attention on depressive disorder, the most common mental disorder in the HIV population. In our analysis we evaluated the presence of personality disorders and alexithymia in a group of patients seropositive for HIV through appropriate psychological tests. Our data revealed a close relationship between socio-emotional alienation, distorted body perception and the difficulty in relating with each other, which is perceived as threatening and judgmental; this concept takes us back to the social stigma that modifies the emotional communication of HIV patients. The illness is experienced as an outsider that modifies the body, imprisons the emotionalism and cannot be controlled. Such personality alterations stop the emotional communication, thereby developing alexithymia.