Your episodes of memory loss don't occur only during the course of another mental health disorder, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.This memory loss is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness. You've had one or more episodes in which you couldn't remember important personal information - usually something traumatic or stressful - or you can't remember your identity or life history. Your mental health professional may compare your symptoms to the criteria for diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), published by the American Psychiatric Association.įor diagnosis of dissociative disorders, the DSM-5 lists these criteria. With your permission, information from family members or others may be helpful. Your mental health professional asks questions about your thoughts, feelings, and behavior and discusses your symptoms. Certain tests may eliminate physical conditions - for example, head injury, certain brain diseases, sleep deprivation or intoxication - that can cause symptoms such as memory loss and a sense of unreality. Your doctor examines you, asks in-depth questions, and reviews your symptoms and personal history. Testing and diagnosis often involves a referral to a mental health professional to determine your diagnosis. Symptoms, which can be profoundly distressing, may last only a few moments or come and go over many years.Diagnosis usually involves assessment of symptoms and ruling out any medical condition that could cause the symptoms. You may experience depersonalization, derealization or both. Other people and things around you may feel detached and foggy or dreamlike, time may be slowed down or sped up, and the world may seem unreal (derealization). This involves an ongoing or episodic sense of detachment or being outside yourself - observing your actions, feelings, thoughts and self from a distance as though watching a movie (depersonalization). People with dissociative identity disorder typically also have dissociative amnesia and often have dissociative fugue.ĭepersonalization-derealization disorder. There also are differences in how familiar each identity is with the others. Each identity may have a unique name, personal history and characteristics, including obvious differences in voice, gender, mannerisms and even such physical qualities as the need for eyeglasses. You may feel the presence of two or more people talking or living inside your head, and you may feel as though you’re possessed by other identities. Formerly known as multiple personality disorder, this disorder is characterized by “switching” to alternate identities. An episode of amnesia usually occurs suddenly and may last minutes, hours, or rarely, months or years.ĭissociative identity disorder. It may sometimes involve travel or confused wandering away from your life (dissociative fugue). Dissociative amnesia can be specific to events in a certain time, such as intense combat, or more rarely, can involve complete loss of memory about yourself. You can’t recall information about yourself or events and people in your life, especially from a traumatic time. The main symptom is memory loss that’s more severe than normal forgetfulness and that can’t be explained by a medical condition.
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