psychiatric disorders
Dissociative Amnesia
Introduction
Dissociative amnesia is a type of dissociative disorder that involves inability to recall important personal information that would not typically be lost with ordinary forgetting. It is usually caused by trauma or stress. Diagnosis is based on history after ruling out other causes of amnesia. Treatment is psychotherapy, sometimes combined with hypnosis or medication-facilitated interviews. (See also Overview of Dissociative Disorders .) In dissociative amnesia, the information lost would normally be part of conscious awareness and would be described as autobiographic memory. Although the forgotten information may be inaccessible to consciousness, it sometimes continues to influence behavior (eg, a woman who was raped in an elevator refuses to ride in elevators even though she cannot recall the rape). Dissociative amnesia is likely underdetected. Prevalence is not well-established, but estimates range from 0.2 to 7.3% ( General reference ). The amnesia appears to be caused by traumatic or stressful experiences endured or witnessed (eg, physical or sexual abuse, rape, combat, genocide, natural disasters, death of a loved one, serious financial troubles) or by tremendous internal conflict (eg, turmoil over guilt-ridden impulses or actions, apparently unresolvable interpersonal difficulties, criminal behaviors). 