An international group of 30 researchers and clinicians, including many leading specialists in dissociation, has published a position paper on maladaptive daydreaming in The British Journal of Psychiatry. It argues that maladaptive daydreaming should should be formally recognised as a mental health disorder and placed in the dissociative disorders section of diagnostic manuals.

What is maladaptive daydreaming?

Whereas, ordinary daydreaming is common, maladaptive daydreaming is vivid, absorbing fantasy that becomes difficult to control and causes distress or interferes with everyday life. Likewise, the proposed formalisation as a psychiatric condition is different from ordinary daydreaming in degree and impact.

Fantasies are persistent or compulsive, vivid and detailed, and may take up long periods that the person has repeatedly tried to reduce. The imagined world can contain continuing storylines, relationships or alternative versions of the self. Music, pacing, rocking, facial expressions or quietly speaking dialogue may deepen the immersion. The experience may provide pleasure or temporary relief from anxiety, shame, loneliness or other difficult feelings. However, lost time and withdrawal from daily life may create further distress.

Why do the authors want maladaptive daydreaming recognised?

The authors say that people often seek help without finding a name or suitable response for what they experience. They argue that maladaptive daydreaming has a recognisable pattern, can impair work, study and relationships. Moreover, it is not fully explained by conditions that may occur alongside it, such as ADHD, depression, anxiety or obsessive–compulsive symptoms. Recognition, they suggest, could improve professional awareness and encourage more specific research and treatment.

The authors also argue that MD is no longer a little-studied or apparently rare problem. More than 50 papers have been published on it over a ten-year period, including at least 25 studies based on collected evidence. One population study estimated that around 2.5% of people—approximately one in 40—may experience MD at any given time. In the authors’ view, the growing body of research and the potentially substantial number of people affected strengthen the case for formal recognition.

Why classify maladaptive daydreaming as dissociation?

Dissociation is a broad term for disruption or disconnection among aspects of awareness, perception, memory, identity, emotion or behaviour. The authors point to studies linking higher maladaptive-daydreaming symptoms with dissociation. They also focus on the experience itself: attention becomes intensely absorbed in an internal world, awareness of the immediate environment recedes, and the person may feel divided between ordinary life and a compelling fantasy life. In their view, this disconnection makes dissociation the best diagnostic home.

Is maladaptive daydreaming the same as DID or losing touch with reality?

No. The paper explicitly distinguishes maladaptive daydreaming from dissociative identity disorder (DID). A fantasy may contain characters with different personalities, but the authors say that maladaptive daydreaming does not involve division of personality or switching as such. They also distinguish it from dissociative amnesia: someone may feel that hours disappeared while immersed, yet still remember the fantasy and their personal history. Nor do the authors describe maladaptive daydreaming as psychosis; the person generally knows that the imagined story is fantasy.

What remains uncertain from the authors’ persepctive?

The authors acknowledge that their revised time thresholds for a proposed diagnosis – at least 30 minutes for an episode and at least one hour a day on most days for six months – sre somewhat arbitrary and need testing.

Causes are also unsettled. Trauma and stress may contribute for some people, but maladaptive daydreaming should not be assumed to result from trauma in every case. It might also be understood as a behavioural addiction, an obsessive–compulsive-spectrum problem or an attention-related condition. The paper argues for dissociation; it does not eliminate those alternatives.

What might this mean for someone affected?

Perhaps the most useful message is that distressing or disabling daydreaming deserves to be taken seriously, even while classification is debated. A person seeking help can describe the experience without claiming a diagnosis: how much time it takes, whether it feels controllable, what triggers or intensifies it, what emotional need it meets and what parts of life it disrupts. A clinician should consider the daydreaming itself while also assessing other possible difficulties. For friends and family, curiosity and compassion are likely to help more than criticism. The paper strengthens the case for recognition; meanwhile, careful assessment still matters.

Primary source: Soffer-Dudek et al. (2025), Maladaptive daydreaming should be included as a dissociative disorder in psychiatric manuals: position paper