Traumatic experiences and dissociative symptoms among Swedish adolescents. A pilot study using Dis-Q-Sweden.
The aim of this study was to explore the occurrence of dissociative symptoms in relation to reported traumatic experiences among adolescents. A normative sample of 216 adolescents and a clinical sample of 30 cases with a history of traumatization were given the Swedish translation of Dissociation Questionnaire, DIS-Q. The results showed that 8.8% of the adolescents reported scores above the cut-off score of 2.5 on the Dis-Q-Sweden, with a female-male ratio of 2.6:1. In the normative sample, 53 (24.5%) of the adolescents reported one or more trauma experiences. The adolescents who self-reported trauma experiences in the normative sample scored higher on the total Dis-Q-Sweden scores and on three of the four subscales compared to the adolescents with no such experiences. The clinical group exhibited significantly higher Dis-Q-Sweden scores than the normative sample on every scale, with 60% above the cut-off score. The study confirms the results from earlier studies that adolescents with a history of trauma exhibit more dissociative symptoms in this study according to Dis-Q-Sweden. The impact of trauma qualities and background factors on the development of dissociative symptoms need to be studied further.
Svedin
Carl Göran
CG
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Lund University, Sweden. CarlGoran.Svedin@skane.se
Nilsson
Doris
D
Lindell
Charlotta
C
D000293:Adolescent; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D004213:Dissociative Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012307:Risk Factors; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013548:Sweden