When a Loved One Has Amnesia It can be pretty distressing to have a family member go through a period of amnesia.

Generalized amnesia occurs when someone forgets everything about their past and identity. Those with dissociative amnesia may be at greater risk of self-injury and suicide. Selective amnesia is when a person forgets something specific, like one person or their own identity. Most cases of dissociative amnesia are temporary, but memory gaps can last anywhere from a few minutes to an entire lifetime. When a person with generalized dissociative amnesia forgets everything about the self and their life, they may move to a new location and establish a new identity but, when discovered, they don’t know how they got there or why they have no identification. Dissociative disorders are mental health conditions that involve feelings of being detached from reality, being outside of your own body or experiencing memory loss ( amnesia ). A person with dissociative amnesia may not remember friends, family members, or coworkers. Symptoms range from forgetting personal information, like one’s own name and address, to blocking out specific traumatic events or even the events of one’s entire life. Dissociative amnesia is not normal forgetting, like misplacing keys or forgetting the name of someone you met once or twice.

Selective dissociative amnesia