Dissociative Disorders

Dissociative disorders can be defined as conditions that involve disruptions or breakdowns of memory, awareness, identity and/or perception. People with dissociative disorders use dissociation, a defense mechanism, pathologically and involuntarily. Dissociative disorders are thought to primarily be caused by psychological trauma.

The five dissociative disorders listed in the DSM IV are as follows:

• Depersonalization disorder: periods of detachment from self or surrounding which may be experienced as "unreal" (lacking in control of or "outside of" self) while retaining awareness that this is only a feeling and not a reality.
• Dissociative amnesia: (formerly Psychogenic Amnesia): noticeable impairment of recall resulting from emotional trauma
• Dissociative fugue: (formerly Psychogenic Fugue): physical desertion of familiar surroundings and experience of impaired recall of the past. This may lead to confusion about actual identity and the assumption of a new identity.
• Dissociative identity disorder: (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder): the alternation of two or more distinct personality states with impaired recall among personality states.
• Dissociative disorder not otherwise specified: used for forms of pathological dissociation that do not fully meet the criteria of the other specified dissociative disorders.

The ICD-10 classifies conversion disorder as a dissociative disorder while the DSM-IV classifies it as a somatoform disorder.