Relationship between child abuse history, trauma, and dissociation in Russian college students

Abstract

Objective: The research was conducted to determine the relationship between violent trauma, child abuse history, and dissociative symptoms in a Russian population.

Method: Three hundred and one undergraduate students from Moscow State Linguistics University participated in the study and completed the Dissociation Continuum Scale, the Violence History Questionnaire, the Traumatic Events Survey (TES), and a demographic measure.

Results: Scores on dissociation and its subfactors were significantly higher in the Russian sample compared to the normative US group. The best predictors for dissociation were experiencing a violent trauma, child abuse history, and/or the experience of a fearful event. Those participants with a prior child abuse history were more symptomatic after adult trauma than those with no such history.

Conclusions: The relationship between trauma/abuse and dissociation is unlikely to be a result of suggestion by therapists or media exposure, since the correlation appears in a Russian population who are relatively unexposed to these suggestive sources. The validity, reliability, and structure of the dissociation measure were relatively similar in American and Russian samples.