Question

PLEASE use these choices for specific diagnosis: no disorder/normal, acute stress disorder, antisocial personality disorder, bipolar disorder, major depression, dissociative fugue, amnesia, &/or identity disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, phobia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and schizophrenia)

(PLEASE use these choices for the type of disorder: normal, anxiety disorders, mood disorders, personality disorders, dissociative disorders, schizophrenia, substance use or stress-related disorders).

Michaela was attending college in San Francisco during the recent earthquake. She lived in the area that was hardest hit by the quake. Michaela was not home when the earthquake hit and was not injured in any way, but when she returned home, she found his building demolished and her two roommates crushed to death. Michaela immediately drove herself to the airport, bought a ticket to Boston, and got on the plane. Her parents found her on their doorstep in Boston the next morning. Michaela remembers nothing about the earthquake and nothing about going to college in San Francisco.

Specific diagnosis _______________           Type of disorder ___________

Answer 1

Type of Disorder - Dissociative Disorder

Specific Diagnosis - Dissociative Amnesia

Dissociative disorder involve disturbance in memory, identity, awareness and perceptions in a person. Dissociative disorders can arise as a defence mechanism to cope with a stressor or trauma. Here, in this example Michaela is hit by a trauma of losing friends and her building demolished. After this she dissociates and travels to her parents.

Dissociative amnesia involves loss of a memory due to a stressor or a traumatic event, and this loss of memory recall pertains to the traumatic event, in which the person is not able to recall that event. Here, Michaela doesn't recall anything about the earthquake and that she even went college in San Francisco.