Philippine E-Journals

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 entitledDissociation 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.