The Association between Type of Dissociation and Psychotic Experiences in a Non-Psychotic Inpatient Sample

ABSTRACT

Robust evidence exists for the link between dissociation and psychotic positive symptoms. The extent to which various dissociative phenomena may contribute to this relationship is still unknown. This study aimed to investigate the association between different dissociative phenomena and psychotic experiences. For this purpose, we analyzed data from 118 consecutively admitted patients of an acute care unit for trauma-related disorders who completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, the German version of the Dissociative Experiences Scale and the Symptom Check-List-90-Revised. Stepwise regression analyses revealed that derealization/depersonalization in combination with amnesia accounted for 44.5% of the variance of the psychoticism subscale of the Symptom Check-List-90-Revised. Absorption in combination with emotional abuse accounted for 24.9% of the variance of the paranoid ideation subscale of the Symptom Check-List-90-Revised. The results reveal that pathological and non-pathological types of dissociation that alter the perception of reality or memory procession may contribute to the development of psychotic experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Dissociation
• dissociative phenomena
• child trauma
• psychoticism
• paranoid ideation

Acknowledgments

We particularly thank Peter Schmid and Jürgen Frick for their assistance in data collection and Hannah Siegel for her helpful comments on the manuscript.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [Tschoeke S.], upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.