What is the dissociative escape?

On strange occasions, some people can travel away from home and leave their lives behind a completely sudden way, without prior notice and without remembering anything from their past. These people show signs of amnesia and cannot even explain the reason for the trip or what has taken them there. It's about the Dissociative leak, a rare memory loss that comes to cause great confusion among those affected.

Content

• What is the dissociative escape?
• Causes of dissociative escape
• Symptoms of dissociative escape
• Dissociative escape treatment
  • Links of interest

What is the dissociative escape?

The dissociative escape is a type of rare amnesia caused by psychological traumas in which the patient loses his memory for a specific period of time and even abandons his daily life to travel far without any apparent reason.

This condition, unlike other types of amnesia, is not caused by physical traumas or diseases in which some brain area is affected, but are extremely stressful contextual circumstances those that can cause this loss of temporal memory as an escape mechanism, causing great confusion, both in the patient and in their relatives.

The dissociative escape is registered in the American Psychiatry Association (APA), as one of the four dissociative disorders together with dissociative amnesia, dissociative identity disorder and depersonalization disorder.

Some people have come to travel many kilometers away from home in a state of confusion that can last hours and even months. Although at first the person can appear normal, later he begins to enter a state of confusion by not being able to remember his past.

Dissociative escape cases They are not very common and those affected can get to transfer and even change identity and form new ties. When they are aware of the lack of familiarity with the place, they try to reconnect with their past and the vast majority of affected usually recover their memory again.

Causes of dissociative escape

Dissociative escape is a psychological escape mechanism in extremely stressful and traumatic situations external to the person, such as natural disasters or wars, or traumatic personal situations, such as the death of a loved one or other difficult experiences, which can lead to a person to this state of blocking and lack of memory about itself.

This strange disorder, affects only a 0.2% of the population, normally adults who have suffered severe and stressful traumas.

According to the diagnostic manual of psychological disorders (DSM-V), there are four conditions to meet the diagnosis of dissociative escape:

• Unexpected and unplanned trip away from the usual place attached to a total or partial amnesia
• Confusion and uncertainty about one's identity and in rare circumstances, adoption of a new identity
• The characteristic trip and amnesia are not consequences of a dissociative identity disorder, the use of drugs or physical diseases
• The episode should result in a deterioration serious enough to interfere with the patient's ability to function in social, labor or domestic environments.

Symptoms of dissociative escape

Dissociative leak can last from a few hours to weeks or months. The main symptoms for a short time are the feeling of confusion and lack of memory of the affected person. When the leak lasts more than a few hours, the symptoms are usually the following:

• State of confusion
• Failures at work or the mostly frequented area
• Autobiographic memory. The affected does not remember things about himself, the events and people of his life)
• Serious stress
• Total disconnection of their own emotions
• Inability to recognize loved ones
• Reach unknown places or those who never usually leave
• Depression and anxiety

Dissociative escape treatment

When a person presents a dissociative escape state, medicine professionals usually evaluate their conditions to rule out a possible physical cause for memory loss. If the answer is negative, the patient is treated through psychotherapy by psychological health professionals.

Psychotherapy focused on stress management and cognitive restructuring are usually very beneficial for these types of patients, as well as family or couple therapies to help you get better management of stressful personal situations. Other effects associated with this type of amnesia, such as depression or anxiety, must also be addressed by professionals through the most appropriate psychological or pharmacological treatments for specific problems.

Links of interest

• What is amnesia and types of amnesia https: // www.psychoactive.com/blog/que-es-la-amnesia-y-tipos-de-amnesia/
• The dissociative escape. Regarding a case and a brief bibliographic review. Magazine of the Spanish Association of Neuropsychiatry. http: // scielo.ISCIII.It is/scielo.PHP?script = sci_arttext & pid = s0211-57352011000400010
• Dissociative esfugue. http: // www.Minddisorders.com/del-fi/dissociative-fugue.HTML.
• Dissociative esfugue: symptoms, causes, and treatment.  Timothy j. Legg, pHD. https: // www.MedicalNewstody.com/articles/319024