The Importance of Being Very Familiar with the Symptoms of Dissociative Disorders by the Interviewer

We will discuss three diverse types of instruments that can be used to assess dissociative symptoms or diagnoses. These tools fall into the categories of comprehensive clinician-led structured interviews, comprehensive self-report tools, and brief self-report screening tools. These guidelines are designed for use in clinical settings, so they do not discuss several other dissociation criteria used primarily for research. This is because these guidelines are designed to be clinically focused ( interviews in a structured format that are comprehensive and led by a clinician). Amnesia, depersonalization, derealization , identity confusion, and identity change are the five symptoms assessed in the DSM-IV Structured Clinical Interview-Revised for Dissociative Disorders ( SCIDDR; Steinberg, 1994a, 1994b, 1995). Most of the items have follow-up questions questioning the description of the experience, specific examples, frequency of the experience, as well as its impact on social functioning and job performance. SCID-DR not only supplies a diagnosis for each of the five DSM-IV dissociative disorders, but also supplies a score for each of the five dissociative symptoms and an overall score based on the frequency and intensity of the symptoms. SCID- DR can take 45 to 180 minutes or longer to administer. It is important that the interviewer, whether a trained technician or a clinician, is familiar with the symptoms of dissociative disorders. The Dissociative Disorders Interview Program (DDIS; Ross, 1997; Ross et al., 1989, 1990) is a structured interview consisting of 132 questions and is used to assess the symptoms of the five DSM-IV dissociative disorders as well as major disorders . depressive disorder, borderline personality disorder, and somatization disorder. In addition, the DDIS assesses issues related to drug addiction, Schneiderian first-degree symptoms , trance, childhood abuse, secondary DID traits, and supernatural or paranormal experiences. Administration of the device typically takes between thirty and sixty minutes. Keywords: Dissociative Symptoms or Diagnoses, SCID-DR, DSM-IV, Diagnoses of Dissociative Disorder, Dissociative Disorders Interview Program