Depersonalization Disorder in Former Addicts (Prevalence of Depersonalization-Derealization Disorder in Former Addicts)

Dissociative experiences are relatively common in the general population. They are equally distributed in women and men, and they tend to be less frequent with age [1,2]. According to WHO’s CIE-10 classification, the process falls within the family of neurosis as a secondary phenomenon to stressful situations and it groups the depersonalization-derealization disorder (DPD-DR) within a single category. However, American Psychiatric Association’s 2014 DSM-5 [3] classification is more explicit, reflecting that self-strangeness or selfestrangement is the essential characteristic of this disorder. Patients feel as external observers of their mental processes, their own body, or a part of it, as if they were oblivious, dead, or empty, as if automated or living in a dream or a movie [4]. Depersonalization disorder is usually described as a set of unreality and self-estrangement experiences, or as feeling as an external observer towards internal sensations and feelings or towards the own body and actions. Derealization refers to unreality or estrangement experiences towards the environment [5,6].