Mean DES Scores Across Populations for Various Studies
General Adult Population
5.4
Anxiety Disorders 7.0
Affective Disorders 9.35
Eating Disorders
15.8
Late Adolescence
16.6
Schizophrenia 15.4
Borderline Personality Disorder
19.2
PTSD 31
Dissociative Disorder (NOS)
36
Dissociative Identity Disorder (MPD) 48
Items from the DES for Each of the Three Main Factors of Dissociation:
Amnesia Factor: This factor measures memory loss, i.e., not knowing how you got somewhere, being dressed in clothes
you don’t remember putting on, finding new things among belongings you don’t remember buying, not recognizing
friends or family members, finding evidence of having done things you don’t remember doing, finding writings, drawings
or notes you must have done but don’t remember doing.
Items — 3, 4, 5, 8, 25, 26.
Depersonalization/Derealization Factor: Depersonalization is characterized by the recurrent experience of feeling detached
from one’s self and mental processes or a sense of unreality of the self. Items relating to this factor include feeling
that you are standing next to yourself or watching yourself do something and seeing yourself as if you were looking at another
person, feeling your body does not belong to you, and looking in a mirror and not recognizing yourself. Derealization is the
sense of a loss of reality of the immediate environment. These items include feeling that other people, objects, and the world
around them is not real, hearing voices inside your head that tell you to do things or comment on things you are doing, and
feeling like you are looking at the world through a fog, so that people and objects appear far away or unclear.
Items — 7, 11, 12, 13, 27, 28.
Absorption Factor: This factor includes being so preoccupied or absorbed by something that you are distracted from
what is going on around you. The absorption primarily has to do with one’s traumatic experiences. Items of this factor
include realizing that you did not hear part or all of what was said by another, remembering a past event so vividly that
you feel as if you are reliving the event, not being sure whether things that they remember happening really did happen or
whether they just dreamed them, when you are watching television or a movie you become so absorbed in the story you are unaware
of other events happening around you, becoming so involved in a fantasy or daydream that it feels as though it were really
happening to you, and sometimes sitting, staring off into space, thinking of nothing, and being unaware of the passage of
time.
Items — 2, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20.