dissociative disorder in the iranian culture: the lawless utopia

Epidemiologic and etiological studies of dissociative disorders are a challenging area in psychiatry. these challenges become more complex when noting that the existing theories cannot explain the differences observed in certain cases; for example, studies in iran have reported the prevalence of dissociative disorders (dissociative amnesia, dissociative fugue, and depersonalization disorder) as less than 0.6%, and there has been no reported case of dissociative identity disorder (did) in this country; meanwhile, the prevalence of all dissociative disorders in the general population of the us has been reported as 18.3%, and the prevalence of did as about 1.1%. although several studies indicate the high prevalence of dissociative symptoms in many iranian psychiatric illnesses, dissociative disorders as a standalone disorder have a very low prevalence in iran. the present article attempts to propose a possible hypothesis for the answer to the above questions through a different cultural conceptualization and seeks to be of some help to future studies in this area. certainly, this hypothesis requires a careful study to be validated.