Dissociative Amnesia
What is Dissociative Amnesia?
Dissociative amnesia is a condition that impairs the person’s ability to remember important information about their own life. This may be more specific memories (thematic) or life history or identity (general).
There are (rarer) cases called dissociative fugue, where a person forgets much if not all of their own information (their own name, personality, family, etc.) and sometimes even leaves their home and adopts an entirely new identity and begins a new life.
In all cases of dissociative amnesia, your memory loss is significantly higher than what would be expected as “normal forgetting”.
Symptoms of Dissociative Amnesia
- Localized: The memory loss affects specific parts of the person’s life (e.g., two years of high school, or a specific ex). Often the memory loss is related to trauma.
- Generalized: Memory loss affects important parts of the person’s life and/or identity. They may be unable to recognize their name, family, job, house, etc.
- Fugue: The memory loss is generalized and the person takes on an entirely new identity. For example, an office worker named Susan with a family doesn’t come home one day and is reported missing. Three months later, she’s discovered living across the country with a new family, working at a gas station, going by the name Barbara, and having no memory of her old family.
Prevalence
It is estimated that 1.8% of the population is diagnosed with Dissociative Amnesia.
What Causes This Disorder to Form?
Dissociative amnesia is caused by overwhelming stress, often caused by trauma. Cases of dissociative amnesia are higher in places where there have been wars, natural disasters or catastrophes. A person with dissociative amnesia may have experienced or witnessed something traumatic that caused them to develop the condition. There may also be a genetic component, as close relatives often tend to develop amnesia, although this has not been firmly established.
Treatment
- Psychotherapy (“talk therapy”)
- CBT (Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy)
- EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
- DBT (Dialectic-Behavior Therapy)
- Family Therapy
- Creative Therapies (music therapy, art therapy, etc)
- Meditation
- Clinical Hypnosis
- Medication
Sources
This Wiki 1.0 article used sources listed in this list.
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