Systematic Reviews
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatr. Oct 19, 2019; 9(6): 83-98
Published online Oct 19, 2019. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v9.i6.83
Dissociation and disasters: A systematic review
Fatih Canan, Carol S North
Fatih Canan, Carol S North, The Altshuler Center for Education & Research at Metrocare Services, Dallas, TX 75390, United States
Fatih Canan, Carol S North, Department of Psychiatry, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX 75390, United States
Author contributions: Canan F and North CS were responsible for the study conception and design and writing of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors report having no conflicts of interest.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Fatih Canan, MD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 5323 Harry Hines Blvd., Suite NE5.102, Dallas, TX 75390, United States. fatihcanan@gmail.com
Telephone: +1-214-6485378 Fax: +1-214-6485599
Received: April 9, 2019
Peer-review started: April 12, 2019
First decision: June 6, 2019
Revised: July 3, 2019
Accepted: August 21, 2019
Article in press: August 21, 2019
Published online: October 19, 2019
Core Tip

Core tip: Almost all existing studies of dissociation in relation to disaster have not focused specifically on this purpose but rather on the relationship of dissociation to other disaster outcomes. Instead of dissociative disorders, broadly defined dissociative phenomena have been examined in disaster survivors. The literature uniformly contains unsurmountable methodological limitations such as reliance on nondiagnostic dissociation measures, lack of temporal specificity to postdisaster time frames, and problems with disaster exposure issues pertaining to sampling, measurement, and analysis. It cannot be concluded from the research that dissociation is an established outcome of disasters.