Friday, March 29

Maladaptive Daydreaming: epidemiological data on a newly identified syndrome.

New Study Published

A new study on MD was published in Frontiers in Psychiatry a journal which “publishes rigorously peer-reviewed research across a wide spectrum of translational, basic and clinical research.” The study was conducted with 1,023 participants by Dr. Nirit Soffer-Dudek and Dr. Nitzan Theodor-Katz of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. A portion of the abstract is below:

Results: The skewness of most items of the 16-item Maladaptive Daydreaming Scale(MDS-16) supports the notion of MD as a binary construct rather than a normallydistributed trait. In the community sample, 4.2% exceeded the cutoff for suspected MD.Rates were higher when focusing on the young adult age group or student samples(5.5–8.5%), suggesting a likely age effect. Following clinical interviews, only 60% ofinterviewed respondents met criteria for diagnosis, suggesting a true point-prevalenceof 2.5% in the Israeli-Jewish population.

Conclusions: This is the first systematic clinical evaluation of the prevalence of MD. Inan Israeli sample, a point-prevalence of 2.5% was found, like several other internalizingpsychiatric syndromes. This result, along with the Non-normal nature of item distribution,both support the validity of MD as a psychological disorder,which should be consideredas a potential addition to future psychiatric diagnostic manuals

Soffer-Dudek, N. & Theodor‐Katz, N. (2022). Maladaptive Daydreaming: epidemiological data on a newly identified syndrome. Frontiers in Psychiatry.  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.871041

To read the full paper click HERE

Translate »