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Dissociative Disorders
Dissociation refers to a disconnection between a person’s thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of who they are. Symptoms of dissociative disorders can potentially affect every area of mental functioning. Dissociative disorders involve disruptions in memory, identity, emotion, perception, behavior, and sense of self.
Examples of dissociative symptoms include the experience of detachment or feeling outside of your body, as well as loss of memory or amnesia. Dissociative disorders are frequently associated with previous experiences of trauma. It is believed that dissociation helps a person tolerate what might otherwise be too difficult to bear.
There are three types of dissociative disorders:
- Dissociative identity disorder: Experiencing multiple independent identities in the same body, each with its own behaviors and memories
- Dissociative amnesia: Having large gaps in personal memories, often related to stressful or traumatic experiences
- Depersonalization/derealization disorder: Persistently feeling removed from personal self and the environment
