Trauma Awareness & Treatment Center TATC

Interpreting the DES
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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.

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Trauma Awareness & Treatment Center TATC
32 West Winchester Street, Suite 101
Murray, UT  84107 

Ph. (801) 263-6367      Fax (801) 263-6370 

E-Mail
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