Psychopathology and Dissociation among Boarding School Students in Eastern Turkey

A subset of boarding schools for adolescents was established in 1993 in the rural sections of Eastern Turkey to provide equity in terms of availability of education. Even though these schools were beneficial in many respects, implementation of this institutional model gave rise to many challenges such as weaker relationships with parents and defiance of authority figures. Failure to develop a mature response to these challenges could lead to the development of psychopathologies such as depression, psychosis, and dissociation. The main objective of this study is to assess the incidence of psychopathology and dissociative experiences of the residential female students in the regional boarding schools compared to a control group. 187 female participants, 128 attending boarding school, and 59 attending day school, as the control group, were included in the study. Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) and Adolescent Dissociative Experiences Scale (ADES) were used as measurement scales. T-test, Mann Whitney-U, Spearman correlation chi-square tests were used to evaluate the association between the variables. There was a significant difference in Interpersonal sensitivity and Psychoticism subscales of BSI. ADES score was found to be significantly higher in the Boarding school group. Boarding school students are at a higher risk of developing psychopathology as a common trauma on a group of people can result in shared dissociation, a collective defense mechanism to cope with the injury, which resembles shared delusional disorder within DSM-V (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Screening measures should be implemented in boarding schools to evaluate adolescents for psychopathology and preventive measures should be taken to intervene in the early stages.