Every month CARP Halton will feature a Mental Health article.
This month our segment will explore Dissociative Disorders: A look at a series of rarer disorders.
Dissociative disorders are mental health conditions that involve experiencing a loss of connection between thoughts, memories, feelings, surroundings, behaviour and identity. These conditions include escape from reality in ways that are not wanted and not healthy. This causes problems in managing everyday life.
Dissociative disorders usually arise as a reaction to shocking, distressing or painful events and help push away difficult memories. Symptoms depend in part on the type of dissociative disorder and can range from memory loss to disconnected identities. Times of stress can worsen symptoms for a while, making them easier to see.
Treatment for dissociative disorders may include talk therapy, also called psychotherapy, and medicine. Treating dissociative disorders can be difficult, but many people learn new ways of coping and their lives get better.
Symptoms depend on the type of dissociative disorder, but may include:
- A sense of being separated from yourself and your emotions.
- Thinking that people and things around you are distorted and not real.
- A blurred sense of your own identity.
- Severe stress or problems in relationships, work or other important areas of life.
- Not being able to cope well with emotional or work-related stress.
- Memory loss, also called amnesia, of certain time periods, events, people and personal information.
- Mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts and behaviours.
The American Psychiatric Association defines three major dissociative disorders: Depersonalization/derealization disorder, dissociative amnesia, and dissociative identity disorder.
Depersonalization/derealization disorder
Depersonalization involves a sense of separation from yourself or feeling like you’re outside of yourself. You may feel as if you’re seeing your actions, feelings, thoughts and self from a distance, like you’re watching a movie.
Derealization involves feeling that other people and things are separate from you and seem foggy or dreamlike. Time may seem to slow down or speed up. The world may seem unreal. You may go through depersonalization, derealization or both. Symptoms, which can be very distressing, may last hours, days, weeks or months. They may come and go over many years. Or they may become ongoing.
Dissociative amnesia
The main symptom of dissociative amnesia is memory loss that’s more severe than usual forgetfulness. The memory loss can’t be explained by a medical condition. You can’t recall information about yourself or events and people in your life, especially from a time when you felt shock, distress or pain. A bout of dissociative amnesia usually occurs suddenly. It may last minutes, hours, or rarely, months or years.
Dissociative amnesia can be specific to events in a certain time, such as intense combat. More rarely, it can involve complete loss of memory about yourself. It sometimes may involve travel or confused wandering away from your life. This confused wandering is called dissociative fugue.
Dissociative identity disorder
Formerly known as multiple personality disorder, this disorder involves “switching” to other identities. You may feel as if you have two or more people talking or living inside your head. You may feel like you’re possessed by other identities.
Each identity may have a unique name, personal history and features. These identities sometimes include differences in voice, gender, mannerisms and even such physical qualities as the need for eyeglasses. There also are differences in how familiar each identity is with the others. Dissociative identity disorder usually also includes bouts of amnesia and often includes times of confused wandering.
Mayo Clinic