Dissociative Amnesia and Dissociative Fugue Tyler Pascocello, Caroline Edwards, and Nassir Adderly

What is Dissociative Amnesia? • Formerly called psychogenic amnesia

• mental illnesses that involve disruptions or breakdowns of memory, consciousness or awareness, identity and/or perception—mental functions that normally operate smoothly

Causes • Overwhelming Stress

• Children subjected to physical, sexual or emotional abuse

• Traumatic Events(war, natural disasters, etc.)

• Genetics

• Injuries interacting with the brain

• Abuse of alcohol and/or drugs

Symptoms of Dissociative Amnesia • Inability to remember past

experiences or personal information

• Some people with disorder might also suffer from depression and/or anxiety

Treatments of Dissociative Amnesia • Try to get the patient in a safe and supportive environment

• Try hypnosis or get the patient into a drug induced hypnosis state.

• When the bad memories that originally caused the state are recovered, the patient may need psychotherapy to help deal with the memories.

Complications of Dissociative Amnesia • Dissociative amnesia will interfere with a person’s general life.

It will affect poorly the patient’s social life, work life, and relationships

• May also cause anxiety or depression

• Dissociative Amnesia can also lead to substance abuse.

Jodi Arias • Said to suffer from dissociative

amnesia and that’s why she can’t remember the day she killed her boyfriend

• http://www.azcentral.com/community/mesa/articles/20130318expert-arias-suffers-from-dissociative-amnesia.html

What is Dissociative Fugue? • One or more episodes of

amnesia in which the inability to recall some or all of one’s past and either the loss of one’s identity or the formation of a new identity occur with sudden, unexpected, purposeful travel away from home.

Cause • Same as dissociative amnesia

Symptoms of Dissociative Fugue • The disturbance does not occur

exclusively during the course of Dissociative Identity Disorder and is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition (e.g., temporal lobe epilepsy).

• Sudden and unplanned travel away from home

• Inability to recall past events or important information from the person's life

• Confusion or loss of memory about his or her identity, possibly assuming a new identity to make up for the loss Can be partial or complete

• Extreme distress and problems with daily functioning (due to the fugue episodes)

Treatments of Dissociative Fugue • There are many treatments for dissociative fugue.

• 1. psychotherapy will help get insight into the main source of the problem

• 2. cognitive therapy will help change bad thinking patterns.

• 3. anxiety or depression medication may help because it is often a patient with Dissociative fugue will suffer from anxiety or depression.

• 4. creative therapy involving music or art.

Complications of Dissociative Fugue • Can lead to traveling far away from home.

• There can be a state of confusion about who the patient thinks they are and might create another identity

• May lead to heavy drinking that will lead to black outs.

• Will interfere with everyday functioning.

Celebrities with Dissociative Fugue Roseanne Barr- also a sufferer of Dissociative Identity Disorder, claimed she was a victim of sexual abuse when she was a child

Hershel Walker- winner of the Heisman Trophy, detected in him when he claimed he didn’t remember ever winning the trophy in the past

Background Info • Dissociative amnesia is more common in women than in men

• Dissociative Fugue is considered to be a rare disorder

• Dissociative amnesia, unlike other types of amnesia, does not result from other medical trauma such as a blow to the head

• Most fugues don’t last very long, range from less than a day to several months

• People suffering from dissociative amnesia often have memories return, but in some cases are never able to retrieve their buried memories

Video of Dissociative Amnesia • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1is6S4sCK4