Publications by authors named "Martin Dorahy"

Article Synopsis
  • * This study conducted a systematic literature review and meta-analyses to determine whether the claims of memory retrieval failure in DID patients are reflected in controlled memory tests.
  • * The findings highlight some memory transfer between identities, but also point out important methodological issues that make it difficult to draw strong conclusions about IIA, suggesting a more nuanced interpretation of these results.
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Background And Objectives: Dissociative detachment experiences (e.g., derealization, absorption) underpin much psychopathology and are often researched in relation to co-occurring affective states such as shame, the latter being known to occur in situations involving actual or perceived negative social evaluation.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study addresses gaps in understanding and measuring sexual violence, which often leads to many victims being overlooked in surveys.
  • Researchers developed the Sexual Encounters Questionnaire (SEQ), a comprehensive tool designed to identify various sexual violation scenarios affecting individuals of all genders and ages.
  • Findings from the pilot studies revealed a high victimization rate of 76.9% among students, with the SEQ demonstrating strong validity and usefulness as an inclusive screening tool for sexual victimization.
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There is ample evidence showing that childhood maltreatment increases two to three fold the risk of victimization in adulthood. Various risk factors, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, dissociation, self-blame, and alcohol abuse are related to revictimization. Although previous research examined associations between risk factors for revictimization, the evidence is limited and the proposed models mostly include a handful of risk factors.

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Objectives: Dissociative identity disorder (DID) and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (SSD) share some overlapping phenomenological features making accurate diagnosis more difficult. Childhood abuse and depersonalization have been associated with psychotic symptoms across psychological disorders but their relationship to psychotic phenomenology remains understudied.

Method: The present study used quantitative measures to examine (1) similarities and differences in phenomenological voice hearing experiences, interpretations of voices, and thought disorder symptoms in individuals with DID (n = 44) or SSD (n = 45), and (2) whether depersonalization and childhood maltreatment influenced the initial pattern of findings.

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Research supports an association between dissociation and elevations in feelings of shame. Yet, some work suggests this connection may be influenced by interpersonal relationship context, with shame heightened when dissociation is experienced with a close friend compared to when alone or with an acquaintance. The current studies sought to further clarify the relational context in which dissociation appears to maximize shame activation.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study explored how different relationship contexts (with a friend, an acquaintance, or alone) affect feelings of shame in individuals experiencing dissociation or sadness.
  • - Participants with dissociative disorders reported feeling more shame and annoyance when experiencing dissociation or sadness in the presence of an acquaintance compared to when they were with close friends or alone.
  • - The findings suggest that being with an acquaintance heightens feelings of vulnerability and the risk of being misunderstood or rejected, leading to increased shame responses.
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Research on disclosure of sexual victimization has consistently demonstrated that the act of disclosure and the disclosure recipient have a synergistic effect in facilitating either positive or negative post-assault outcomes. While negative judgments such as victim blame have been argued to serve a silencing function, experimental investigations of this claim are lacking. The current study investigated whether invalidating feedback in response to self-disclosure of a personally distressing event produced feelings of shame, and whether shame influenced subsequent decisions around re-disclosure.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study examines how childhood abuse influences auditory hallucinations through dissociation, focusing on two groups: those with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and those with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD).
  • - Findings indicate that in the DID group, depersonalization mediates the distress related to auditory hallucinations, while both depersonalization and amnesia are linked to non-auditory hallucinations like visual and tactile experiences.
  • - In contrast, the SSD group shows that absorption mediates the relationship between childhood abuse and various non-auditory hallucinations, suggesting different dissociative mechanisms at play in the two disorders.
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Objective: Discontinuities in memory are the hallmark symptoms of most dissociative disorders but are also reported by patients diagnosed with related disorders, including PTSD. Memory discontinuity is most evident in dissociative identity disorder (DID), where patients may report amnesia in 1 identity for information available in other identities (i.e.

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The Christchurch mosque shootings on March 15th, 2019 was the deadliest incident of mass violence in New Zealand for over a century. The present study investigated the psychological impact of these terrorist attacks targeting a specific minority community on the psychological functioning of the wider New Zealand population by examining changes in terrorism anxiety, sense of community, psychological distress, and wellbeing. Data from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Survey (N = 47,951; age range 18-99 years, M = 48.

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Introduction: Recent theoretical models and preliminary data suggest that shame is a central emotion in the context of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH or voice-hearing). Nevertheless, all previous studies were correlational. Thus, the present study sought to explore whether simulated AVH experiences can trigger shame using an experimental design.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The studies investigated whether dissociative detachment leads to increased feelings of acute shame, with Study 1 involving college students and Study 2 focusing on adults in treatment for childhood sexual abuse.
  • - Results from Study 1 showed that participants reported higher shame after experiencing dissociative detachment compared to a relaxation condition, and this effect was consistent even when accounting for anxiety.
  • - In Study 2, analyses revealed that acute detachment also predicted state shame among clinical participants, with feelings of being flawed and exposed as common reasons for shame following detachment experiences.
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Dissociative experiences have been associated with diachronic disunity. Yet, this work is in its infancy. Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is characterized by different identity states reporting their own relatively continuous sense of self.

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Amnesia is a core diagnostic criterion for Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), however previous research has indicated memory transfer. As DID has been conceptualised as being a disorder of distinct identities, in this experiment, behavioral tasks were used to assess the nature of amnesia for episodic 1) self-referential and 2) autobiographical memories across identities. Nineteen DID participants, 16 DID simulators, 21 partial information, and 20 full information comparison participants from the general population were recruited.

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If heterosexual male victims had been more active in the #MeToo movement, how might they have been judged? Although the #MeToo movement has been regarded as an historic milestone for women who were victimized by men in positions of power, participation in the movement by male victims has been noticeably absent. Research indicates that victims may avoid disclosure if they anticipate negative social reactions, and male victims may attract greater levels of victim blaming than female victims, particularly if their perpetrator was female. The current study investigated attributions of victim blame against a fictional heterosexual male in a between-subjects vignette design.

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Firmly held beliefs that have a delusional quality are commonly experienced in those with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) and have been reported in those with dissociative identity disorder (DID). However, no study to date has compared delusional belief content and characteristics between these diagnostic groups. This study examined delusional content, and the degree of conviction, preoccupation and distress associated with them in 50 participants with DID and 50 with an SSD exploring also dissociation and childhood trauma as predictors of delusional beliefs.

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This paper investigated a 60-item version of the Multidimensional Inventory of Dissociation (MID) with the potential to capture the full range of dissociative symptoms that characterize each of the dissociative disorders (DD). The 28-item Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) was designed to capture a wide range of dissociative phenomena, but college population studies indicate it may not be adept at identifying the full range of dissociative symptoms and disorders. The 218-item MID has the advantage of capturing the full range of dissociative symptoms and has diagnostic capabilities for all DSM-5 DD, but the disadvantage of taking considerably longer than the DES to complete.

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Objective: Cognitive models posit negative trauma appraisals as maintaining symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. Recent research has demonstrated that alienation appraisals (feeling disconnected from the self and others) are salient in trauma-related distress. Studies show that alienation appraisals fully mediated the relationship between trauma exposure and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in trauma-exposed adults.

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While evidence suggests a division between two qualitatively distinct forms of dissociation, no scale has been specifically designed to differentiate between them. This study describes the development and validation of the Detachment and Compartmentalization Inventory (DCI). The DCI was developed from dissociation theory, 29 existing dissociation scales and expert opinion.

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Deliberate self-harm (DSH) involves a physical act with the intent of harming the self. There are many precipitants to this behavior, with dissociation receiving increasing attention. The current study examined the quartile risk model for predicting deliberate self-harm, which proposes that four quadrants of dissociation (low normative, high normative, low clinical, and high clinical) represent varying levels of risk for engagement in DSH.

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People respond differently to potentially traumatic events. To explore predictors of a chronic and delayed trajectory of posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) after a natural disaster, we analyzed psychometric data collected from 412 residents of Christchurch, New Zealand after a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck in February 2011.

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Individuals with dissociative identity disorder (DID) often report having no access to autobiographical experiences encoded by other identities. This research used the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) to determine whether there was transfer of episodic self-referential memory events across amnesic identities. Nineteen DID individuals, 16 DID simulators, and 41 comparison participants (divided into amnesic and nonamnesic groups) engaged with an audio vignette of embarrassing scenarios to produce the experience of episodic self-referential events.

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