Dissociative Experience In Psychiatric Out-Patients Who Have Possession Belief

Abstract EN

Objective: To investigate whether psychiatric outpatients who believe that their illnesses are due to devil possession tend to have elevated dissociation scores as com-pared to a control group reporting at the same psychiatric facility.

Method: Case-control design with consecutive recruitment using semi structured inter-view of psychiatric out-patients at King Abdul-Aziz University Hospital, Riyadh.

The subjects who believe that their illnesses were due to possession were considered cases (46) compared to controls (43).

All subjects completed the Dissociative Experience Scale (DES), Arabic version.

Results: Cases showed significantly higher DES score than controls.

Among the cases, the presence of dissociative symptoms was significantly associated with high values of DES score.

Neither gender nor education had effect on belief in possession.

Conclusion: The results support previous findings suggesting a link between possession belief and dissociative phenomena among psychiatric patients.