To examine the potential relevance of alexithymia and induced cognitive-emotional processing for the efficacy of emotional disclosure.
Associations were examined of alexithymia and emotional and cognitive word use with self-assessed psychological and disease activity outcome in 37 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (23 females; mean age 58 years).
Cognitive and positive emotion word use during the disclosure sessions predicted improved psychological well-being but not disease activity after the intervention. Negative emotion word use and alexithymia did not significantly predict outcome.
Our study suggests that poor cognitive-emotional processing may impede the outcome of emotional disclosure interventions.