Causes and Effects of Dissociative Disorders: Analysis of Dissociative Amnesia

Abstract

There are three types of dissociative disorders dissociative amnesia, depersonalization-derealization disorder, and dissociative identity disorder, all three have similar symptoms of feeling disconnected from reality however each disorder has very complex problems that make the person suffering from it have trouble in everyday interactions and can ruin someone’s life if they don’t get the help they need. The main points of this research paper will be on the main three disorders, what causes them and what the brain goes through in order for an illness such as this one to occur. The different treatments for someone suffering from this will also be addressed, a day in the life of someone with one of these disorders is very complex and confusing for the individual experiencing this and will be explained for each illness in detail to fully understand the severity of these illnesses. I will write about these one at a time to fully focus on one topic before moving on and present as much information as I can.

Main Body

Dissociative Amnesia is a rare disorder that causes a person to forget subconscious information about themselves such as their name, place of work, where they live, and family members. There are many types of amnesia to classify the different situations amnesia can occur in for example localized amnesia makes the individual forget a certain event during a long period of time. This period of time can vary from person to person depending on the type of abuse they suffered from, localized amnesia can make someone forget hours or even decades of one’s life. A child who went through years of abuse can forget anything even happened and live as an adult unaware that anything happened only feeling fear when something triggering enters their environment such as an item the victim was beaten with. Veterans suffering from war fatigue from constant combat in action can lose recollection of events that occurred over a long period of time and completely forget what they experienced as well. Most individuals that experience localized amnesia also suffers from selective amnesia in a combo forgetting as the name implies very specific moments that have traumatized the person mostly related to physical abuse as well as sexual abuse. Generalized amnesia could be considered a more serious type of amnesia due to the fact that all personal information is completely wiped from one’s memory. People who suffer from this occasionally cannot remember who their family is as well as who they are or where they live. Basic skills or complex ones the individual has learned before the amnesia can also be forgotten and those memories may or may not return.

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Generalized amnesia can also be related to systematic amnesia because of the loss of memory in one certain thing such as your family but still remembering who you are personally.

Another very problematic type of amnesia is continuous amnesia where the individual loses their memory as they experience new things because of there loss of memory with current events it can impair their ability to form relationships and can cause confusion from others telling them things they did from the events they have forgotten completely. Many veterans coming back from war experience this and usually end up getting PTSD after undergoing treatment and remembering the previous events they went through. However, where these types of amnesia are debilitating dissociative fugue can completely destroy someone's life. When someone goes through a dissociative fugue they completely lose memory of who they are and practically become someone else completely and can end up leaving the state or the country living under a different identity they have created wiping their previous completely from their memory eventually this can subside and memories of their previous life can occur however there is no guarantee that they will remember who their family members are or what life they lived before but only have the feeling like something is wrong because of this devastating realization depression is very common for those who undergo this process. There have also been cases of people waking up from their new life as if nothing had ever happened not knowing how they got in that position or what they have done in the period the episode occurred. Dissociative fugue is rare however it is initially caused by the same as the other amnesia-related disorders very high stress as well as a traumatic event. For the most part, this type of amnesia is very temporary, and even after a couple of months the individual goes back to their daily lives the main issue that can happen is the same fugue recurring if it isn't treated by a medical professional. For the most part, most of these types of amnesia are temporary and can be treated a few ways without causing too much damage to the one suffering, however for the most part amnesia isn’t the only problem and usually, another mental illness reveals itself such as PTSD after remembering the incident their mind is trying to block out. If the individual is suffering from a small amount of memory loss and they can function normally in society there’s no point in having them remember anything, especially if the memory is too traumatic for them to handle it could in fact make the situation worse. In the more serious cases of amnesia, there are two types of treatment the first is hypnosis, hypnosis can be achieved with either some form of therapy or can be induced through