Dissociative disorders are characterized by a disruption of and/or discontinuity in the normal integration of consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, perception, body representation, motor control, and behavior1. Dissociative experiences occur on a continuum ranging from the minor or normative dissociative states such as absorbtion or daydreaming customary to daily life to pathological states...

The latest edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) defines dissociation as “ . . . a partial or complete loss of the normal integration between memories of the past, awareness of identity and immediate sensations, and control of body movements” (p 151). Thus defined, the concept of dissociation captures a heterogeneous group of psychiatric conditions previously subsumed...

OBJECTIVE There may be an association between a low serum cholesterol level and dissociative disorders. METHOD The subjects of the study were 16 patients with dissociative disorder and 16 normal comparison subjects (two men and 14 women in each group). Total cholesterol, triglyceride, high-density lipoprotein, low-density lipoprotein, and very low density lipoprotein levels were compared. R...

Dissociative disorders, includingDissociative Identity Disorder have largely been reported from North America. To date only one case has been reported from South Africa. This article presents case histories of five South African black patients who were diagnosed with various dissociative disorders. Three were diagnosed with Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified ( Dissociative Psychosis)...

Background and objectives: Dissociative disorders remain relatively controversial diagnoses in British psychiatry. The aim of the current paper was to assess Northern Irish psychiatric patients with complex clinical presentations for dissociative disorders. Method: Twenty patients meeting operationally defined criteria for psychiatric complexity were blindly assessed by a psychiatrist in a diag...

The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument for the measurement of present-state dissociative symptoms, the Clinician Administered Dissociative States Scale (CADSS). Reported here are interrater reliability and internal consistency of the CADSS, validity as assessed by comparisons with other instruments for the assessment of dissociation, and sensitivity of the CADSS to discriminate ...

Functional amnesia for autobiographical memory is a rare but pathognomic sign of dissociative disorders. Amnesia for part of one's personal history is sometimes also seen in other functional disorders like depression and schizophrenia but autobiographical amnesia in these disorders is relatively rar . Phenomenologically the autobiographical memory loss, amnesia for events during the amnestic ep...

Although several investigations have noted an association between eating disorders and dissociative disorders, little work has addressed the treatment of patients with both conditions. As an inpatient service focused on severely-ill eating disorder patients, it became necessary to diagnose and treat concomitant dissociative disorders. We describe a cognitive-behavioral inpatient program develop...

objective: the present study aimed to clarify dissociative symptoms in patients with schizophrenia and its association with negative and positive symptom of schizophrenia. methods: based on the 4th edition of diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm-iv) criteria, 80 schizophrenic subjects were randomly selected from patients who referred to the clinics of psychiatry hospital i...