Dissociative disorders
A dissociative disorder is a mental health condition that alters a person's sense of reality.
Someone with a dissociative disorder may have memory loss or may feel:
- that their body or the world around them is unreal
- uncertain about who they are
- that they have many different identities
Most people affected by this disorder will have experienced a traumatic event during childhood. They 'dissociate', or switch off from reality, to cope with it.
It can affect people at any age and is nothing to do with a head injury or underlying health condition – it's the result of the brain adapting to a difficult early life.
different types of dissociative disorders:
- dissociative amnesia - repeatedly have periods where they cannot remember information about themselves or about events in their past life. They may also forget a learnt talent or skill.
- Depersonalisation- means feeling detached from yourself, observing yourself and your feelings and thoughts as if they belong to someone else you are watching in a movie.
- Dissociative identity disorder, or 'multiple personality disorder', is the most extreme of the three types
- .If you've been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, you may feel uncertain about who you are and struggle to define yourself.
- You may feel the presence of other identities, which may each have their own names, voices, personal histories and mannerisms.
