Dissociative Disorders - Types, Symptoms, Causes & Treatments

Dissociative disorder is a mental health condition with complete memory loss or issues with your identity. It is followed by problems with emotions, memory, perception and behaviour where you cannot connect or link your thoughts.

Read this article to learn more about dissociative disorders, their types, causes, symptoms, and treatment procedures.

What Are Dissociative Disorders?

'Dissociation', the term, refers to disconnections from the real world and yourself and is a mental state where you experience amnesia. Dissociative disorders are certain mental conditions where you experience a detachment even from your near ones. As a result, there is a lack of continuity between thoughts, actions, memories, identities and surroundings.

When you are diagnosed with such a disorder, you tend to escape reality, unable to accept the real world. As a result, you are unable to conduct day-to-day functions and activities. These dissociative disorders might develop for several reasons, but the primary reason is a reaction to a trauma. However, if you have too much stress, it can worsen the symptoms leading to complications.

What Are the Different Types of Dissociative Disorders?

The three different types of dissociative disorders are:

1. Dissociative Amnesia

Dissociative amnesia comes with a major symptom: memory loss. In this case, you cannot recall situations, events, people, or information from past events. Sometimes, this trait happens explicitly due to any traumatic episode, and there is a complete loss of memory. As a result, you cannot recognise yourself and become involved in a dissociative fugue, where you wander away from your life.

2. Dissociative Identity Disorder

Commonly known as multiple personality disorder, you tend to switch to alternative identities randomly in this trait. You hallucinate two people with completely different identities to communicate within your mind.

Each of these identities might consist of a name and might have certain characteristics. You also hallucinate them to have different vocal tones, physical qualities and features. However, if you have this trait, you are likely to have dissociative fugue or dissociative amnesia as well.

3. Depersonalisation-Derealisation Disorder

This trait includes a continuation of detachment where you think you are outside yourself, analysing your thoughts, actions, and feelings from a distance, just like in a film. This is called depersonalisation, where you will notice a detachment as you view people and the things surrounding you.

They might feel like a slow-motion action, and time will feel like speeding up or becoming too slow. An unreal world, confused thoughts and unusual sensations will haunt your mind. This means you feel depersonalisation and derealisation, both at the same time.

What Are the Symptoms of Dissociative Disorders?

The symptoms of dissociative disorders include:

Loss of Memory: Sudden loss of memory or amnesia of specific events, traumatic episodes, certain periods or moments, people and even important information.
Unable to Identify Yourself: You confuse your identity where you cannot identify yourself. You question and self-doubt your being, leading to blurred thoughts of yourself.
Detachment With Emotions: You feel completely detached from your emotions and yourself and cannot express it either.
Surrounded by Imaginary World: People, places, and objects surrounding you start seeming unreal or imaginary, slow-moving or still. You are in a dreamlike state, unable to identify objects.
Unable to Control Your Emotions: You cannot cope or manage your emotions, stress, or anxiety levels leading to impulsive behaviours. This can also lead to depression and suicidal thoughts.
Breaking of Relationships: These changing behavioural patterns might lead to significant issues in your relationships and even hamper your professional life. Doctors believe all these symptoms might develop in adolescents from the young teenage years (16 to 17 years of age). Parents must immediately consult a doctor or a psychiatrist if they notice such symptoms.

Some other common symptoms of Dissociative disorders are discussed below:

Frequent mood swings and shifts in behavioural patterns.
Problem in remembering personal and essential details.
Completely forgetting things you have done or events you have taken part in.
Alternative identities where you do not realise who you are.
Panic attacks, anxiety and depression, lead to loneliness.
Suicidal thoughts might lead to harming oneself.
Substance abuse and also alcohol and drug abuse.
Sleep disorder, insomnia and sleepwalking.

If children are diagnosed with this disorder, notice symptoms such as:

Staring outside the window and being completely unaware of the activities inside.
Communicating with imaginary friends and objects.
Forgetting activities they have done or said.
Having a learning disability or ADHD.

What Are the Causes of Dissociative Disorders?

The causes of dissociative Disorders are:

Traumatic Events - The primary cause of this disorder may be a recent traumatic episode that has made you completely disconnect yourself from the right moment. This is also known as pre-traumatic dissociation, where your mind unconsciously tries to pull you out from the series of events so that it doesn't impact you much.
Sexual or Physical Assault - Sexual assault during childhood, childhood abuse, torture, accidents, etc., are certain reasons that might cause you to become numb. The mind completely forgets the events that had happened, which is a shock due to the traumatic episodes.
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder - This is another reason which might cause the dissociative disorder. When you are in an auto-hypnotic state where your mind tends to wander around, and you have reduced sensation in your body, you are in deep dissociation. Your therapist will use hypnotherapy to manage your anxiety and stress to help you cope with these symptoms.
Consuming Medications and Drugs - Taking illicit drugs, consuming too much alcohol, and taking medicines without prescriptions might also experience this condition. For example, consuming medicine like LDS or taking psilocybin can result in disorders where you lose your sense of self.
Other Mental Health Conditions - Mental health conditions such as acute stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and eating disorder might also trigger these attributes.

What Are the Risk Factors of Dissociative Disorders?

The risk factors of dissociative disorders are listed below:

Long-term Stress During Childhood - Individuals who have endured long-term emotional abuse, physical abuse, and stressful scenarios in childhood are at the most significant risk.
Traumatic experience - Certain traumatic events like natural calamities, war, medical procedures, torture, kidnapping incidents, etc. are also risk factors that can lead to this condition.

How to Diagnose Dissociative Disorders?

Mental health experts diagnose dissociative disorders by checking all issues from the past. The diagnosis process takes place in the following way:

First, you must share with your doctor all past traumatic events and inform the doctor if you are under certain medications.
Then, they may ask you to go through a blood test to rule out the chances of any illness and to understand the exact cause of your disorder.
Your doctor might also prescribe an electroencephalogram or EEG test to rule out chances of seizure disorder that might trigger dissociation.
After all these tests, your doctor might ask you to consult a psychiatrist who will try to understand if you have had any traumatic event in the past that caused this dissociation.
They can further ask you to undergo dissociative experiences or a DES test, or a structured clinical interview for the dissociation test.

How to Treat Dissociative Disorders?

Dissociative disorders do not have any specific drug or medication for treatment. You can manage the symptoms and reduce them from getting too complicated through counselling, therapies and a mix of certain medicines. Here are some treatment methods for dissociative disorders:

Psychotherapy Sessions

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - Through this session, your doctor helps you notice your negative approaches and behavioural patterns and change them.
Hypnotherapy - A professional certified in hypnosis and trained in treating these disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder must undergo this session. Through this session, they help you to explore your memories in a relaxed mind and come out of them.
Phasic Trauma Therapy - Through this treatment, your doctor first tries to stop your suicidal or self-harm thoughts. Then, they will help you process the traumatic episodes and leave those memories slowly.
Dialectical Behavioural Therapy - A very common therapy for treating borderline personality disorder, this treatment helps you to learn skills and work on them. It also allows you to control your emotions and stop negative behaviours.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy - Techniques of cognitive behavioural therapy are used here, along with certain visual exercises in this therapy. It helps in working through your memories of very traumatic episodes that had an extreme impact on you. This therapy reduces symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, flashbacks of troubling past and nightmares.

Family Treatment

Talking to your family members, your loved ones or friends and sharing your thoughts with them is a great support and a wonderful way to treat the disorder. Your therapist might ask your close one to come along with you during the sessions so they can analyse the interactions and understand the development of your thought processes throughout the sessions.

Medications

Your psychiatrist might prescribe certain antidepressants, drugs to control your anxiety, stress and sleep-related issues and a mood stabiliser. If you are diagnosed with schizophrenia, your doctor might prescribe an antipsychotic drug.

When to See a Doctor?

Although dissociative disorders cannot be diagnosed at an early stage, you must opt for medical assistance when you notice the following symptoms:

Sudden aggressive and violent behaviour that is uncontrollable.
Negative effect and hampering of relationships.
Impulsive behaviour causes harm to workflow.
Causing self-harm/suicidal thoughts and attempts.

How to Manage and Prevent Dissociative Disorders?

The only way to control the signs and symptoms of this disorder is by preventing the occurrence of the symptoms. Here are the below ways to help you prevent this disorder:

Learn about your condition and try to be aware of the same.
Try to indulge in fun and interesting activities.
In the case of children, talk to your family therapist about your children's changing behaviours.
Talk to your child, and interact with them as much as possible.

Here is every detail about dissociative disorders and how you can treat them. However, the situation can deteriorate if you do not seek doctors' help at an early stage. This will surely help you cope with the situation for a longer time.

FAQs About Dissociative Disorders

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Are dissociative disorders hard to treat?

Psychotherapy is an ideal treatment for a dissociative disorder where your therapist helps you integrate different identities and control your symptoms. However, the therapy can be difficult if it includes remembering past episodes and coping with them.

Can accidents cause dissociative disorders?

Yes, accidents can also cause dissociative disorders where these traumatic episodes harm your mental state of mind. In addition, brain injury or hurting in some other body part can also cause trauma due to extreme pain.