Dissociative disorder (amnesia) is a mental disorder in which the patient forgets some events from his life partially or completely. There are two types of disease. This is partial amnesia - with it, selective memories are lost and spatial characteristics are disturbed. Complete amnesia is the loss of all memories at any time. If we take into account the period, then it can be retarded - all memories disappear for a long period of time after memory loss, and anteretrograde - it is combined with retrograde amnesia.
What is it and how to treat it?
Dissociative amnesia is a partial loss of memory associated with a stressful situation. The disease proceeds hard, causing anxiety in a sick person, due to a partial loss of communication with the outside world, and a misunderstanding of where reality ends and oblivion begins. Amnesia manifests itself as a mental disorder, most often in children who have experienced severe mental pressure from adults or other children.
In adulthood, stress, lack of sleep, conflicts, etc. are added to the unstable psyche. The brain begins to block the negativeinformation, as if protecting the body from overvoltage, and people plunge into the void.
Complications arising during the course of the disease can cause depression, anxiety, self-aggression, go into an obsessive form of suicidal attempts and force a person to commit suicide. Psychiatrists are trying to treat the disease with hypnosis and sedative drugs based on medicinal plants (phytotherapy).
Reasons
The main causes of dissociative amnesia include various kinds of emotional and psychological trauma of a personal nature.
Usually such a reaction occurs, for example, in an accident, loss of loved ones, rape by close relatives. According to statistics, it is those who experienced severe emotional trauma in childhood, such as the murder of parents, in front of a child, other crimes, more often experience a state of dissociative amnesia in adulthood. Children's psyche often cannot cope with feelings about what they see, and prefers to forget everything, erase memories. And, as you know, no memories - no problems.
One of the problems of such a state is that, forgetting the tragic events, a person often forgets all the others - what is his name, where he is and so on. The second problem may be that such states sometimes begin to recur in cases where some traumatic event occurs, and this may become the rule. This leads not only to mental trauma, but also to unfortunateoccasions.
Unlike ordinary amnesia, dissociative causes, symptoms and treatment are somewhat different. Timely consultation with a specialist will help in the fight against the disease.
Symptoms
Most often, the development of symptoms contributes to the reaction of the human brain to traumatic events in a person's life. Due to the effects of stress on the body, the symptoms begin to intensify. There are several symptoms of dissociative amnesia disease:
- A person loses memory for a certain point in time. He may not remember what happened to him.
- He can't recognize his friends and loved ones.
- Amnesia usually lasts hours, minutes, but rarely months.
- Begins to break the psyche. Sometimes a person has dangerous thoughts.
- Sometimes the patient may not recognize himself. Even if he sees his own face, he cannot remember who it is.
- Such people stop feeling like a person.
- Things and people seem foreign and unreal.
- There are often problems with work and personal life.
- May cause severe headaches.
- Alcoholism and substance abuse appear.
- Person becomes aggressive or attempts suicide.
- Sleep is disturbed, depression appears. Sleep disturbance leads to insomnia and sleepwalking.
- Sexual dysfunction observed.
- Alarm condition.
Diagnosis
The diagnosis of a dissociative disorder is made by a doctor based on an analysis of the patient's personal history, as well as in the presence of three or more symptoms of the disease. To diagnose a dissociative disorder, research is required to identify the following diseases and problems of the patient:
- intoxication of the body;
- head injury;
- sleep disorders;
- diseases of the brain.
It is necessary to exclude everything that can cause similar symptoms and affect the development of the disease. In the absence of physical causes, the diagnosis is made by a specialist of a narrower focus, most often a psychiatrist.
Steps in identifying a disease
Steps in establishing dissociative amnesia:
- Assessment of the mental state of the patient. Orientation in time and space must be maintained. There is a slight slowness of thinking and difficulty in trying to reproduce events from the past, however, the patient recalls current events without difficulty.
- Identification of symptoms indicative of a mental disorder. The patient seeks to disguise the true cause of the disease under the guise of amnesia, avoids frankness.
- Sick people tend to have unexpressed suicidal thoughts and need to be vigilant about this moment.
- Some groups of patients are most susceptible to the occurrence of the disease, among them children,abused, war veterans, disaster survivors.
It is important to find the right way to help a person with dissociative amnesia, otherwise the consequences can be severe.
Drug Therapy
Although there are no medications intentionally used to treat the symptoms of dissociative amnesia, a doctor may prescribe:
- Antidepressants, namely, "Cipralex", "Deprim", "Melipramin".
- Antipsychotics: Invega, Olanzapine, Paliperidone.
- Drugs that improve cerebral circulation, and vitamins: Piracetam, Glycine, hopantenic acid.
Phytotherapy
You can try different soothing herbs. These include:
- Valerian root - relieves nervous tension and helps to fall asleep.
- Hop - helps to relax.
- Schisandra - relieves anxiety.
- Ginseng root - improves concentration and memory (increases the biosynthesis of neurotransmitters (conductors) in the brain), adds vitality, increases resistance to stress and immunity, has antioxidant properties.
- St.
Phytotherapy is a method of treatment with medicinal herbs that can beapply in tablets, tinctures, extracts and even fresh or dried. Modern medicine does not deny herbal treatment, but does not recognize the method as effective. Consequently, herbs give away their beneficial substances, and chemical preparations complement, making the effect more significant and productively influencing the treatment.
Psychotherapy
For the treatment of dissociative amnesia, a set of measures is important, including a calm environment, hypnosis. Psychotherapy plays an important role. Since it does not require the introduction of a patient into a special state, it can be carried out regularly, including several times a day.
Psychotherapy of such patients should be carried out in such a way that they gradually remember all the events that happened in life, with the exception of traumatic ones. The period of traumatic events must be approached very carefully. It is important that the doctor understands better than the patient the cause of the internal conflict that caused amnesia, and mentally formed such an attitude to events that would not traumatize the patient's psyche.
To do this, the doctor must find out how the patient reacts to certain conflict situations, what emotions he experiences at the same time. This allows you to form a more correct reaction of the patient to traumatic situations. Many, for example, blame themselves when others do bad things. It should be clarified that the mental problems of others are their troubles, not yours. Your task is to act in the name of your interests, without blaming yourself for someone else's imperfection, or deviation from the ideal. Striving for the idealrelationships, high demands on others and oneself are often the cause of psychological trauma and conflict. Including dissociative amnesia. The patient should be returned to a real assessment of himself and others.
Therapy Methods
Methods used in the psychotherapy of dissociative amnesia:
- Hypnosis will undoubtedly help to restore memories, to identify traumatic events that have a great influence on the development of amnesia. This is a long and laborious work, however, it is this aspect of therapy that is more effective. Hypnosis creates a state of deep relaxation and calms the mind. The state of hypnosis makes it possible to better concentrate on a specific thought, activate memory, emotions, while memories will not be blocked.
- Creative art therapy. The patient is involved in the creative process. This can help people who have trouble articulating their own ideas and emotions. Art helps to know oneself, cope with the signs of traumatic experiences and promote positive change. Creative art therapy includes art, dance and movement, theatre, music and poetry.
Prevention
The ideal prevention of dissociative amnesia is the absence of severe stress that negatively affects the psyche of children. Since this is not always possible, one should be attentive to the mental state of children by asking them about problems at school and in the yard. It is also important to tune the offspring to the correct perception of the world so that they avoid unnecessary maximalism in the requirements forsurrounding. It must be clarified that only in the diversity of people and characters is the value of the human community.
So, demanding that everyone behave the way you want is wrong. It is also important to explain that human competition is good as long as it does not take on painful forms.
