Dissociative Symptoms in Filipino College Students

Dissociative disorders are not commonly diagnosed in the Philippines. This article defines dissociation and summarizes how dissociative experiences are commonly viewed in the Philippine context. Qualitative data from a larger study entitled Dissociation in a student sample in the Philippines (Gingrich, 2004) is used to illustrate how the dissociative symptoms of amnesia, depersonalization, derealization, identity confusion, and identity alteration are experienced by a some high dissociators in a sample of Filipino college students. These participants fit DSM-IV-TR criteria for either dissociative identity disorder (DID) or dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS). Implications of these findings for the prevailing view of dissociation in the Philippines are then discussed.