Guidance for Assessing Trauma-Related Dissociation: How to Attend to Process in Addition to Content

What is it about?

This paper has guidance for mental health professionals working with trauma-related dissociation. In this article, we argue for dissociation-informed assessment. We explain that for assessment to be truly trauma-informed, it must also be dissociation-informed. We make a case for the importance of attending to process-related considerations in dissociation-informed assessment. (1) We emphasize the mental health professional's stance, including prioritizing a collaborative and rapport-based relationship, professional reflexivity, and cultural responsiveness. (2) We also consider how professionals can attend to dissociation moment-to-moment during assessment, such as when a client has a strong reaction to the potentially daunting experience of assessment or dissociates during assessment. (3) Professionals can attend to these process-related considerations across settings (e.g., forensic, treatment) to be trauma- and dissociation-informed, although we discuss how this may look different across settings. (4) We call for mental health training to become dissociation-informed, too.

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Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

Why is it important?

As the mental health field moves to become increasingly trauma-informed, we hope that the framework in this article helps to move us closer to being dissociation-informed. This paper not only contains practical guidance for assessing trauma and dissociation at the process-level, but it also is a call to action for our field — to move toward being dissociation-informed. We describe how clinicians and clinical training can enact these principles.

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