Screening For Depersonalization-Derealization With Two Items Of The Cambridge Depersonalization Scale

Depersonalization (DP) and derealization (DR) are considered to be highly underdiagnosed. Therefore the development of screening instruments is important. From the Cambridge Depersonalization Scale (CDS) two items were extracted discriminating best patients with clinical significant DP from patients without DP. These two Items were assembled to a short version of the CDS. This short version (CDS-2) was tested in a sample of 38 patients with clinical significant DP-DR and 49 patients without or only mild DP-DR. Scores were compared against clinical diagnoses based on a structured interview (gold standard). The CDS-2 was able to differentiate patients with clinical significant DP well from other groups (cut-off of CDS-2 >= 3, sensitivity = 78.9%, specifity = 85.7%) and also showed high reliability (Cronbachs alpha = 0.92). Therefore the CDS-2 can be considered as a useful tool for screening and identification of DP-DR.