chap 5- dissociaative amnesia

Dissociative amnesia:

person is unable to recall important personal events or info, usually of stressful nature, about their lives. The loss of memory is much more extensive than normal forgetting and is not caused by physical factors (such as hitting your head), typically, an episode of this is caused by a traumatic or upsetting event.

what are the diff forms of Dissociative amnesia?

localized amnesia, selective amnesia, generalized amnesia, continous amnesia

localized amnesia:

the most common type of dissocitative amnesia. A person loses all memory of events that took place within a limited period of time, almost always beginning with some very disturbing occurrence. (ex- a soilder may wake up after a week of horrific combat battle and remember events leading up to the battle, and after the battle, but not be able to remember any of the events during the battle- this blank of time is called the amnestic episode, during this episode poeple may appear confused, in some cases they wander about aimlessly--> they are already experiencing memory difficulties but seem unaware).

selective amnesia:

the second most common form of dissociaive amnesia

person remembers some, but not all, of the events that toolk place during a period of time. (ex- the solider might remember certian interactions or convos that occured during battle, but not the distrubig events such as the death of a friend)

generalized amnesia:

a form of dissociative amnesia

memory loss extends back to times ling before the upsetting period- so not only do they forget the event itself, but they forget events that also occured eariler in their lives.  

continous amnesia:

a form of dissociative amnesia

forgetting continues into the present- the person might forget new and ongoing experiences as well as what happened before and during the event.

Diaaociative fugue:

very extreme version of dissociative amnesia. Here, he perosn not only forgets their personal dentities and details of their past, but also flee to an entirely diff location. They can be breif, or last for years. 

Depersonalization-derealization disorder:

persistent and reoccurent episodes of the sense that one’s own mental functioning or body is unreal or detached and/or the sesne that one’s surroundings are ureal or detached