Dissociative Disorders

Dissociative Disorders are characterized by a disruption in the normal functioning of consciousness, identity, memory, or the world around her / him. Dissociative Disorders can be acute or chronic.

Dissociative disorders are so-called because they are marked by a dissociation from or interruption of a person's fundamental aspects of waking consciousness (such as one's personal identity, one's personal history, etc.). Dissociative disorders come in many forms, the most famous of which is dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder). All of the dissociative disorders are thought to stem from trauma experienced by the individual with this disorder. The dissociative aspect is thought to be a coping mechanism -- the person literally dissociates himself from a situation or experience too traumatic to integrate with his conscious self. Symptoms of these disorders, or even one or more of the disorders themselves, are also seen in a number of other mental illnesses, including post-traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, and obsessive compulsive disorder.

Since dissociative disorders seem to be triggered as a response to trauma or abuse, treatment for individuals with such a disorder may stress psychotherapy, although a combination of psychopharmacological and psychosocial treatments is often used. Many of the symptoms of dissociative disorders occur with other disorders, such as anxiety and depression, and can be controlled by the same drugs used to treat those disorders. A person in treatment for a dissociative disorder might benefit from antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication.

Psychogenic Amnesia
Amnesia is the temporary or permanent loss of a part or all of their memory. When this is due to extreme psychosocial stress, it is labeled psychogenic amnesia. This stress is most often associated with catastrophic events.

There are four sub-categories of psychogenic amnesia: localized amnesia, selective amnesia, generalized amnesia and continuous amnesia.

Localized Amnesia
This is most often an outcome of a particular event. The disease renders the afflicted unable to recall the details of a usually traumatic event, such as a violent rape. This is undoubtedly the most common type of amnesia.

Selective Amnesia
As its name implies, this is similar to localized amnesia except that the memory retained is very selective. Often a person can remember certain general occurrences of the traumatic situation, but not the specific parts which make it so.

Generalized and Continuous Amnesia
These less common forms of amnesia are defined as when the diseased either forgets the details of an entire lifetime, or as in the case of continuous amnesia, they can't recall the details prior to a certain point in time, including the present.

Psychogenic Fugue
Recognized as an independent clinical syndrome, a fugue is simply the addition to generalized amnesia of a flight from family, problem, or location. In highly uncommon cases, the person may create an entirely new life.

Multiple Personality
Defined as the occurrence of two or more personalities within the same individual of which any of it during sometime in the person's life is able to take control. This is not often a mentally healthy thing when the personalities vie for control.

Symptoms are of course somewhat self-explanatory, but it is important to note that often the personalities are very different in nature, often representing extremes of what is contained in a normal person. Sometimes, the disease is asymmetrical, which means that what one personality knows, the others inherently know.

Depersonalization Disorder
This is the continued presence of feelings that the person is not oneself or that they can't control their own actions. While these are common human feelings, it is labeled a disorder when it is recurrent and impairs social and occupational function.

One symptom is a change in the person's perception of themselves. The disease may incur strange feelings that one's limbs are not shaped or sized correctly. It also may cause a sense of being outside of one's body. While self-awareness is extremely distorted, "reality-testing functions" remain intact which denotes an absence of delusions or hallucinations. The person perceives others as mechanical or as if they existed in a dream. The afflicted have a constant worry about going insane.