By: Taylor Dodd Period- 6

 ‘alteration in the perception or experience of the self so that one feels detached from and as if one is an outside observer of one’s mental processes or body’ (American Psychiatric Association, 1994: pp. 488–490).  It is a dissociative disorder  Involve disruptions or breakdowns of memory, consciousness, awareness, identity, and/or perception  You persistently or repeatedly have a sense that things around you are not real  You have the feeling that you're observing yourself from outside your body.  May interfere with a person's general functioning, including social and work activities and relationships  Alteration in the perception or experience of the self

 According to a study by the National Institutes of Mental Health fifty percent of adults in the United States experienced one or two short attacks of depersonalization during their lifetime as a result of stressful events  1/3 of patients experiencing life-threatening illnesses are prone to brief depersonalization attacks just like 40% of psychiatric cases  Twice as many women than men who are prone to depersonalization disorder  Characterized as a rare disease which affects less than 200,000 people in the general population of the United States.

 Continuous or recurring feelings that you're an outside observer of your thoughts, your body or parts of your body  Numbing of your senses or responses to the world around you  Feeling like a robot or feeling like you're living in a dream or in a movie  The sensation that you aren't in control of your actions, including speaking  Awareness that your sense of detachment is only a feeling, and not reality  The sense that your body, legs or arms appear distorted, enlarged or shrunken  Feeling like you are observing yourself from above, as if you were floating in the air  Feeling emotionally disconnected from people you care about  Fears of going crazy and losing control of one’s own natural abilities  Depersonalization Disorder findings also show short-term memory loss, Attention- Deficit Disorder, and spatial-temporal reasoning  Often is triggered by intense stress or a traumatic event—such as war, abuse, accidents, disasters, or extreme violence that the person has experienced or witnessed.

 Goal of treatment is to address all stresses associated with the onset of the disorder  Psychotherapy  Cognitive therapy  Medication  Family therapy  Creative therapies(arts, music, etc.)  Clinical hypnosis  Complete recovery is possible for many patients

     DepersonalizationDisorderstatistics/2010/12/28/id/381262/ DepersonalizationDisorderstatistics/2010/12/28/id/381262/   depersonalization-disorder.aspx depersonalization-disorder.aspx  &um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=AndiU6ngEs- dyATjoYK4DA#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=rQ2htgcDBIEOOM%253A%3BhDBFB43eLOZhDM%3Bhttp%253A %252F%252F2.bp.blogspot.com%252F_tiBL0FCeeJU%252FTQt8ZTqEw1I%252FAAAAAAAAACU%252F5aOs RrafWyA%252Fs1600%252Fdissociation%252B3.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.downwardspiralintothe vortex.com%252F2010%252F12%252Fsurreal-ing-criteria-9.html%3B428%3B439  &um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=AndiU6ngEs- dyATjoYK4DA#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=IQGmC6ncouONNM%253A%3BCfHNAnareSzKdM%3Bhttp%253 A%252F%252Ffarm3.static.flickr.com%252F2705%252F _4a59d62674_z_d.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F %252Fwww.denimandtweed.com%252F2011%252F11%252Fnothing-in-biology-makes-sense- treating.html%3B1024%3B708