Al Salt Al toubi, Aida Saihi MacFarland, Samir Al-Adawi, Atsu Dorvlo, Yahya Alkalbani, Lakshmanan Jeyaseelan, Matlooba Ayoub ALZadjali and Sara S. Al-Adawi
Ministry of Health, Sultanate of Oman
Oman Medical College, Sultanate of Oman
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Clin Exp Psychol
Background: There is a dearth of studies that have explored cognitive performance in different grades of spirit
possession.
Aim: This study was undertaken to investigate two areas: the first was to explore whether there is a difference in
demographic characteristics among presently defined grades of spirit possession in Oman: Total Possession (TP),
Partial Possession (PP) and Symbiotic Possession (SP) seen in the Omani society. The second was to compare
cognitive performance among the different grades of possession. Assessment criteria for these three groups included
indices of current nonverbal reasoning ability, attention /concentration and recall, and those measures calling upon
executive functioning.
Results: In terms of socio-demographic characteristics, being female, having low education and being in a particular
age-group are strongly associated with participants classified as TP. In contrast, the SP group endorsed more history
of trauma. The three groups showed performance variation in current nonverbal reasoning ability, attention /
concentration and recall, and executive functioning, with TP appearing to have poorer performance on these
measures compared to PP and SP.
Conclusion: Previous studies have investigated whether spirit possession is a pathological state or a culture-specific
idiom of distress. To our knowledge, this is the first study that has examined performances in cognitive measures
among different types of possession. The entrance of possession trance disorder and dissociative trance disorder into
the psychiatric nomenclature warrants more studies of this nature.
Keywords: possession trance disorder, dissociative trance disorder, spirit possession, cognitive performance, Oman.
Alsalt Altoubi is a senior Psychiatry Resident at Oman Medical Specialty Board in Sultanate of Oman. He is also a registered doctor at Ministry of Health in the Sultanate. His research interests are child Psychiatry disorders and stress management programs for healthy individuals and people with mental Disorders as well social psychiatry. Recently, he has focused more on psychological interventions for people with depression.
E-mail: Squdoctor@hotmail.com
