Dissociative Disorders

Question 1

what are the 3 dissociative disorders

Answer 1

• Dissociative Amnesia
• Dissociative Identity Disorder
• Depersonalization/Derealization

Question 2

Common traits of dissociative disorders

Answer 2

• Tend to be triggered by traumatic events
• Dissociative reactions are main and only symptoms
• Don’t tend to have other PTSD-related symptoms
• no clear physical factors

Question 3

Identity

Answer 3

A sense of who we are and where we fit in the environment

Question 4

Dissociative Amnesia

Answer 4

• Inability to recall important autobiographical information (info usually stressful in nature)
• Often directly triggered by traumatic or upsetting event
• Procedural memory and memory for abstract and encyclopedic information remain

Question 5

Types of dissociative

Answer 5

Localized Amnesia (most common)
Selective Amnesia
Generalized Amnesia
Continuous Amnesia

Question 6

Localized Amnesia

Answer 6

Unable to recall specific events, creating memory gaps often tied to stress or trauma

Question 7

Selective Amnesia

Answer 7

Forgetting parts of a period, such as some details of a traumatic event
- Will still have some understanding of what happened

Question 8

Continuous Amnesia

Answer 8

Forgetting each new event as it happens often triggered by trauma
- Issues creating new memories

Question 9

Generalized Amnesia

Answer 9

Lose some memory from before trauma

Question 10

Dissociative Fugue

Answer 10

Extreme dissociative amnesia
- Persons may forget personal identities and details of past lives
- Flee to different location
- Could be short-lived and nearby or more extreme
- tends to end abruptly
- Rare to not recover memory after
- Don’t see reoccurance

Question 11

Can ‘repressed’ memories be recovered?

Answer 11

• Most experts believe that memories recovered through therapy should be considered with caution
• Research has found that participants can be made to create false memories
• Adults with sexual abuse history report consciously forcing memories from their minds (subjective forgetting appears to not interfere with objective memory for events relating to abuse)

Question 12

Cognitive Approach to theories of dissociative amnesia

Answer 12

Dissociation may be unconsciously used as a defense against intolerable memories or stressors

Question 13

Behavioral Approach to theories of dissociative amnesia

Answer 13

State-Dependent learning
- If you learn something within a particular situation or state of mind, you are likely to remember it best when in the same condition again
- People with dissociative disorders may particularly rigid and forget information processed under high arousal conditions

Question 14

Depersonalization

Answer 14

The sense one’s own mental functioning or body is unreal or detached
- May feel that they are observing from the outside
- body may feel foreign, perceptions may feel distorted
- Emotional state

Question 15

Derealization

Answer 15

The sense one’s surrounding are unreal or detached
- People may seem removed, mechanical, even ‘dead’
- Objects may appear to change in shape and size

Question 16

Depersonalization/ Derealization Disorder

Answer 16

• Depersonalization or Derealization
• Accompanied by feelings worry, as if ‘going crazy’
• Can be triggered by trauma stress, pain, fatigue, recovery from substance use disorder
• Symptoms may be recurrent in times of stress
• No gender bias
• Comorbid with depression and recovery from substance use
• Uncommon overall