Psychotherapy High Wycombe Psychotherapy High Wycombe - Last updated 25 April 2024

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DSM-IV: Depersonalization Disorder

Patients with this Dissociative Disorder experience episodes during which they feel detached from themselves. They may experience themselves or their surroundings as unreal. They may feel outside or lacking control of themselves.They retain awareness that this is only a feeling.

Diagnostic criteria for 300.6 Depersonalization Disorder

A. Persistent or recurrent experiences of feeling detached from, and as if one is an outside observer of, one's mental processes or body (e.g. feeling like one is in a dream).

B. During the depersonalization experience, reality testing remains intact.

C. The depersonalization causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

D. The depersonalization experience does not occur exclusively during the course of another mental disorder, such as Schizophrenia, Panic Disorder, Acute Stress Disorder, or another Dissociative Disorder, and is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g. a drug of abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition (e.g. temporal lobe epilepsy).

Based on the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition APA

The online Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders lists most of the major psychological disorders and illnesses and lists the criteria that must be fulfilled in order for a diagnosis to be made. This resource is not a substitute for proper professional psychiatric diagnosis.