DISSOCIATIVE DISORDER

Dissociative disorders are a group of conditions involving disruptions in a person's normally integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, or perception. The term dissociation refers to the human mind's capacity to engage in complex mental activity in channels split off from, or independent of, conscious awareness

➤ Concept of dissociation was first promoted over a century ago by the French neurologist Pierre Janet (1859-1947).

➤ Dissociation only becomes pathological when the dissociative symptoms are "perceived as disruptive, invoking a loss of needed information, as producing discontinuity of experience" or as "recurrent, jarring involuntary intrusions into executive functioning and sense of self".

➤ In people with dissociative disorders, normally integrated and well-coordinated multichannel quality of human cognition becomes much less coordinated and integrated, affected person may be unable to access information that is normally in the forefront of consciousness,

Appear mainly to be ways of avoiding anxiety and stress and of managing life problems that threaten to overwhelm the person's usual coping resources. DSM-defined dissociative disorders, the person avoids the stress by pathologically dissociating-in essence, by escaping from his or her own autobiographical memory or personal identity. 

➤ DSM-5 recognizes several types of pathological dissociation.These include depersonalization/derealization disorder, dissociative amnesia-dissociative fugue-and dissociative identity disorder.