Prevalence of dissociative disorders in an acute care day hospital population

To estimate the prevalence of dissociative disorders in a day hospital and examine their relation to traumatic experiences, trained clinicians evaluated 70 of 229 patients consecutively admitted to an acute care day hospital. They used the Mini-Structured Clinical Interview for DSM- III-R Dissociative Disorders and the Traumatic Experience Questionnaire. Six of the 70 patients (9 percent) received a definite diagnosis of a dissociative disorder. Five of the six patients reported a childhood history of sexual or physical abuse. The results show that dissociative disorders are not rare among general psychiatric patients in a day hospital setting and are associated with histories of childhood trauma.