Dissociation in adolescents: how common is it, and what keeps it going?

Adolescents appear to experience dissociation more frequently than adults — but we still know very little about how dissociation presents in this age group, or which psychological mechanisms might explain it.

To explore this, we used two large datasets from young people aged 13–18. We found that dissociation was commonly experienced — especially changes in agency, disconnection from the self, and feeling detached from other people or the world.

We also tested whether these experiences could be explained by psychological mechanisms suggested in recent cognitive behavioural models of dissociation. One seemed particularly important: emotion regulation - specifically, suppressing feelings. Adolescents who relied more on pushing down their feelings to regulate how they felt were more likely to report dissociation one month later.