Signs and symptoms of Dissociative disorders
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There are four major dissociative disorders:
- Dissociative amnesia
- Dissociative identity disorder
- Dissociative fugue
- Depersonalization disorder
Symptoms common to all types of dissociative disorders include:
- Memory loss (amnesia) of certain time periods, events and people
- Mental health problems, including depression and anxiety
- A sense of being detached from yourself (depersonalization)
- A perception of the people and things around you as distorted and unreal (derealization)
- A blurred sense of identity
Each of the four major dissociative disorders is characterized by a distinct mode of dissociation. Signs and symptoms of each disorder may include:
Dissociative amnesia.
Memory loss that's more extensive than normal forgetfulness and can't be explained by a physical or neurological condition is the hallmark of this condition. Sudden-onset amnesia following a traumatic event, such as a car accident, happens infrequently. More commonly, conscious recall of traumatic periods, events or people in your life — especially from childhood — is simply absent from your memory.
Dissociative identity disorder.
This condition, formerly known as multiple personality disorder, is characterized by "switching" to alternte identities when you're under stress. In dissociative identity disorder, you may feel the presence of one or more other people talking or living inside your head. Each of these identities may have their own name, personal history and characteristics, including marked differences in manner, voice, gender and even such physical qualities as the need for corrective eyewear. There often is considerable variation in each alternate personality's familiarity with the others. People with dissociative identity disorder typically also have dissociative amnesia.
Dissociative fugue.
People with this condition dissociate by putting real distance between themselves and their identity. For example, you may abruptly leave home or work and travel away, forgetting who you are and possibly adopting a new identity in a new location. People experiencing dissociative fugue typically retain all their faculties and may be very capable of blending in wherever they end up. A fugue episode may last only a few hours or, rarely, as long as many months. Dissociative fugue typically ends as abruptly as it begins. When it lifts, you may feel intensely disoriented, depressed and angry, with no recollection of what happened during the fugue or how you arrived in such unfamiliar circumstances.
Depersonalization disorder.
This disorder is characterized by a sudden sense of being outside yourself, observing your actions from a distance as though watching a movie. It may be accompanied by a perceived distortion of the size and shape of your body or of other people and objects around you. Time may seem to slow down, and the world may seem unreal. Symptoms may last only a few moments or may wax and wane over many years.
Src: wikipedia.org
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