Assessing Dissociative Symptoms and Dissociative Disorders in College Students in the Philippines

Abstract

This study is part of a larger project (Gingrich, 2004) that examined dissociation in a student sample in the Philippines. High and low-moderate dissociators were identified from a sample of 459 freshman university students based on cutoff scores on two brief screening instruments. The Multidimensional Inventory of Dissociation (MID) and Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Dissociative Disorders (SCID-D) were then used to determine if any of the participants met diagnostic criteria for dissociative identity disorder (DID) or other dissociative disorders (DDs). Comparisons were made between the frequency of specific DDs diagnosed by each instrument and an evaluation done of the usefulness of the MID and SCID-D as diagnostic tools in a Filipino student sample.

KEYWORDS:

• SCID-D
• MID
• Philippines
• dissociation
• dissociative disorders
• student sample

Partial funding for this project was provided by the Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Research and Development (OVCRD) of the University of the Philippines. Study findings were presented in part at the International Society for the Study of Dissociation International Annual Fall Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on November 8, 2005. The author wishes to thank Marlene Steinberg for her help with the scoring and interpretation of the SCID-D, as well as for her suggestions regarding publication of the results. The author would also like to thank Paul Dell for his feedback regarding cultural adaptation of MID items, and for scoring the MID.