This would also tighten the diagnostic criteria for the disorder. Brief reactive dissociative disorder is being proposed as a new diagnostic entity. It is an acute dissociative response occurring during or within one month of a traumatic episode. It may involve stupor, depersonalization, amnesia, derealization, or other disconnection from the trauma that leads to dysfunction, for example failure to obtain necessary medical or legal assistance. There is no place in the current psychiatric nosology to describe an extreme, acute reaction to physical trauma.
Dissociation is a fascinating phenomenon.
It presents us with dramatic shifts in cognition and affect, unusual changes in the boundary between conscious and unconscious experience, and is an effective means of coping with extreme discontinuities in physical experience. This section will provide you with an opportunity to integrate dissociation with our understanding of the response to trauma, differential diagnosis, and the range of psychiatric treatments. M.D. Recent research suggests that dissociation is more likely to happen during and in the aftermath of physical trauma. Depersonalization, derealization, and psychogenic amnesia are common symptoms during natural disasters, combat, and other forms of physical trauma. In turn, a history of trauma has been found to be an almost universal etiology of such extreme chronic dissociative disorders as multiple personality disorder.