Subjective experiences of dissociative and conversion disorders among adolescents in India

R Shangmi Moyon, Bino Thomas and Satish C Girimaji

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 2022, vol. 68, issue 7, 1507-1515

Abstract: Dissociative/conversion disorders affect almost 31% of children and adolescents in a clinical setting. These children experience significant impairments in their academics, and daily functioning, with high chances of developing other psychiatric comorbidities such as anxiety and depression. However, there are no studies that explore the experiences of suffering from dissociative/conversion disorders from perspective of the sufferer. Therefore, the paper has aimed at exploring the subjective experiences of dissociative and conversion disorders among adolescents in the Indian context by examining their understanding about the illness and the reason they ascribe to the cause of their illness. The study used a qualitative semi-structured interview to understand their illness. In total, 10 adolescents of age group between 12 and 16 years participated. Eight out of the 10 participants were female and the mean age was 12 years. All of them were in-patients in the department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, NIMHANS, which is the tertiary mental health care Institute India and pioneer Institute of mental health in Asia. All participants have had at least one or more consultation history either with a traditional healer or/and physician. Thematic analysis identified vital themes such as (1) Adolescents’ attributing factors of the illness, (2) Cognitive and emotional appraisal of stressful situation/s, (3) Adolescents’ appraisal of different explanatory model, (4) Living with the Impact of the illness. This analysis about dissociative/conversion disorders from adolescents’ perspective has a major contribution in enhancing the clinical knowledge and practice in planning and managing children/adolescents diagnosed with dissociative/conversion disorders.

Keywords: Adolescent; dissociative disorders; conversion disorders; subjective experiences; adolescent mental health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00207640211036178 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:68:y:2022:i:7:p:1507-1515

DOI: 10.1177/00207640211036178

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Social Psychiatry
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().