Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders in Europe: Theoretical, Scientific, and Clinical Advancements
BIO: Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, and researcher. He engages in the diagnosis and treatment of severely traumatized patients at the Top Referent Trauma Center of Mental Health Care Drenthe, Assen, The Netherlands. He performs his scientific research at this hospital, and collaborates with universities in the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland.
TALK ABSTRACT:
Dissociation and the dissociative disorders currently receive increasing interest in several European countries, although this progress tends to be local, dependent on the efforts of relatively few professionals, and opposed by antagonistic forces. In this presentation, the major theoretical, scientific and clinical advancements will be reviewed.
Theoretical work focuses on the concept of dissociation, ways in which the personality can become structurally dissociated, dissociative psychosis as a phenomenon and a diagnosis, the link between attachment disorders and major dissociative disorders, and the idea that conversion disorder is a dissociative disorder. Evolving research includes the psychology and psychobiology of dissociation and dissociative disorders, the epidemiology of dissociative disorders, and the relation between exposure to extremely stressful events and the emergence of dissociative symptoms and disorders.
Thus, one European longitudinal study clearly demonstrates a causal link between documented exposure to excessive stress in childhood and dissociative symptoms in early adulthood. Other research explored how patients with dissociative identity disorder (DID) have different psychobiological reactions to experimental challenges than healthy controls instructed to simulate DID.
New instruments are developed to evaluate the presence of dissociative symptoms and disorders. For instance, a new diagnostic interview is under construction that should help clinicians to distinguish more sharply between true and false positive cases of dissociative disorders than currently available tools allow. Clinically, Europe witnesses a major investment in the education and training of therapists in the state-of-the-art assessment and treatment of dissociative disorders and related disorders. This development is accompanied by an increase of mental health care institutions that provide treatment to patients with these disorders. Some ideas for further progress will be offered.
