The nurse is caring for a patient with a dissociative disorder resulting in a sudden identity disturbance owing to the inability to recall significant personal information. This is called:
Explanation
•Dissociative amnesia is a dissociative process that results in a sudden identity disturbance owing to the patient’s inability to recall significant information.
•Dissociative amnesia is the most common of the dissociative disorders. Dissociative disorders have the essential feature of a disruption in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, or environmental perception. Dissocation is a subconscious defense mechanism that helps a person protect his or her emotional self from recognizing the full effects of some horrific or traumatic event by allowing the mind to forget or remove itself from the painful situation or memory.
•Dissociative identity disorder was previously known as multiple personality disorder. It is considered as the most serious of the dissociative disorders. Patients have two or more distinct personalities, each of its own behavior and attitudes.
•Dissociative fugue is a dissociative process that results in an identity and memory disturbance manifested by sudden travel away from the home or work environment along with confusion about personal identity, or rarely, the assumption of a new identity.
•Depersonalization disorder is a rapid-onset, persistent dissociative process in which the patient's experience of the self or perception of the reality of the self or environment is changed.