Développement et validation de l’échelle des processus dissociatifs (DPS) dans un échantillon clinique atteint du trouble obsessionnel compulsif (TOC).

This study investigates the factor structure of the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES-II) in a clinical sample of adults with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), with a focus on identifying and validating a purified Dissociative Absorption (DA) factor. Utilizing an existing dataset collected at the Obsessive-Compulsive Research Laboratory of the Centre de recherche de l'Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal, we aimed to replicate findings from Soffer-Dudek et al. (2015), who identified a clinically relevant eight-item DA factor in a non-clinical population. The study pursued three primary objectives: (1) to test whether DA constitutes a unique factor within a three-factor model of the DES in an OCD clinical sample using confirmatory factor analysis; (2) to examine whether DA scores significantly predict OCD symptom severity, controlling for depression; and (3) to compare DA scores across three groups — individuals with OCD, a mixed anxiety/depressive disorder clinical control group, and a non-clinical control group. Results indicated that while the three-factor DES model did not achieve adequate fit in this clinical sample, the eight-item DA factor alone demonstrated excellent fit. DA significantly predicted OCD symptoms, explaining 17% of variance in OCD total scores after controlling for depression, with the strongest associations found for obsessions, checking, just right, and indecisiveness symptom domains. Contrary to expectations, individuals with OCD did not score higher on DA than controls; rather, the anxiety/depressive disorder group showed the highest DA scores. These findings suggest that DA is clinically relevant to OCD symptomatology but may function as an exacerbating or vulnerability factor rather than a characteristic feature of OCD per se. The eight-item DA scale is proposed as a parsimonious stand-alone measure for future research on the role of absorption in OCD.