Dissociative disorders are mental illness that patients’ experiences disconnect between the memories, personal identity, and their surroundings. Patients suffering from the disorders experience disorientations in their daily functioning because of various discrepancies in the mind. There are various dissociative disorders with the common being dissociative fugue, dissociative identity disorder, and dissociative amnesia (Van Der Kloet, Merckelbach, Giesbrecht, & Lynn, 2012). These disorders are due to various reasons the main one being the mind developing a coping mechanism to cope with trauma. The trauma can be long term physical, sexual, or emotional abuse in children. Most soldiers who are exposed to zones of war also experience some sort of disorders.
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), commonly called the multiple personality disorder is a condition leading to the development of different personalities that manifest equally. When an alternate personality manifests itself, the “core” or the real self loses time that result in memory loss during that period. It is mainly associated to past physical and sexual abuse. Dissociative amnesia involves memory loss for past events that may occur in response to a traumatic event (Van Der Kloet et al., 2012). The condition is psychogenic in nature where at some level, the mind does not wish to remember certain events. Depersonalization disorder involves individuals who experience alterations in their perception of self and word.
Risk factors that result in personal identity loss include long-term physical, emotional, or sexual abuse (Van Der Kloet et al., 2012). In all cases, memory is flooded with too much information that is not easily integrated that floats around in the cognitive system. These results in consciousness disconnect fragments that create an illusion, which results in false identity. It then manifests into nightmares until there is a mental breakdown. Disrupted sleep has been associated with dissociation. The complications arising from this disorder includes but not limited to suicidal thoughts sleep disorders depression and anxiety. Thus, one way of addressing cognitive dysfunction is to treat sleep that is a major prerequisite for this disorder.
Reference
Van Der Kloet, D., Merckelbach, H., Giesbrecht, T., & Lynn, S. J. (2012). Fragmented sleep, fragmented mind: the role of sleep in dissociative symptoms. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(2), 159-175.