According to DSM-5, memory disturbances can be localized (failure to recall events during a circumscribed period of time), selective (patient can recall some, but not all parts of a circumscribed period of time or traumatic event), systematized (loss of memory for a specific category of information), continuous (loss of memory for each new event as it occurs), or generalized (acute onset of complete loss of memory for one’s life history). More specifically, the symptoms and criteria of dissociative amnesia are (a) an inability to recall important autobiographical information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature, that is inconsistent with ordinary forgetting (b) that causes significant distress in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning (c) not attributable to psychological effects of substances (e.g., alcohol or drugs), neurological, or medical condition and equally (d) not better explained by other psychological disturbances such as (among others) post-traumatic stress disorder, neurocognitive disorders, traumatic brain injury, and factitious disorder. The DSM-5 considers dissociative amnesia as the inability to recall important autobiographical information, in the absence of neurological disorders and of any organic cause. The disturbance was diagnosed as “amnesia of uncertain etiology.” Severe disturbances in remote memory tests were registered, while no impairments in cognitive or anterograde amnestic functions were found or personality disorders. Recent distress associated with COVID-19 lockdown was reported, while no previous significant distress or psychiatric history emerged during the clinical interview, conducted with the patient and parents.
#Known social amnesia cases series
After the exclusion of any organic disturbances, 10 days after the clinical onset, a series of psychometric (neuropsychological and psychodiagnostics) tests were administered to the patient. The objective of this study was to describe the case of an unexplained sudden memory loss that only partially fits with the criteria for dissociative amnesia, in a juvenile patient aged 16 years, which occurred during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Few cases with this pattern are described in the scientific literature and still fewer regarding adolescents. Dissociative amnesia, defined in the DSM-V as an inability to remember important autobiographical experiences, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature, is however a controversial phenomenon. Sudden retrograde memory loss, in the absence of neurological causes, is usually referred to as a dissociative symptom.
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