Traumatic experiences and dissociative symptoms among Swedish adolescents. A pilot study using Dis-Q-Sweden

Abstract

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.