Our sample included a total of 447 individuals, aged 13–78, from 45 countries who responded to online announcements. It documents the experiences of 340 self-identified maladaptive daydreamers who spend excessive amounts of time engaged in mental fantasy worlds, in comparison to 107 controls. This study explores the recently described phenomenon of Maladaptive Daydreaming (MD) and attempts to enhance the understanding of its features. Considering the instrument’s high sensitivity and specificity levels, it seems an excellent measure for future investigation of MD that will, hopefully, shed light on the etiology and psycho-biological mechanisms involved in this mental condition, as well as on the development of effective MD treatment methods. The MDS and its subscale demonstrated good validity, sound internal consistency and temporal stability and discriminated well between self-identified individuals with and without maladaptive daydreaming. MDS scores were associated with obsessive–compulsive behavior and thoughts, dissociative absorption, attention deficit, and high sense of presence during day- dreaming, but less with psychotic symptoms. A 3-correlated-factors model best presented the underlying dimensions Yearning, Kinesthesia and Impairment, capturing related rewarding experiences as well as psychological impairment of maladap- tive daydreaming.

Our sample consisted of 447 English-speaking individuals from 45 different countries. This study describes the development of the Maladaptive Daydreaming Scale (MDS), a 14- item self-report instrument designed to gauge abnormal fantasizing.

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