Depersonalisation disorder: a cognitive–behavioural conceptualisation

Emotion and the Unreal Self: Depersonalization Disorder and De-Affectualization

“…emotion-reducing) reappraisal, and identified a pathway from right VLPFC through nucleus accumbens and ventral striatum, which appears to be specialised for the inhibition of responses to aversive stimuli (Wager et al, 2008). This is of potential relevance to DPD, firstly because the area of right VLPFC identified by these authors is anatomically very close to that repeatedly identified in DPD, but also because in DPD, there is a clinical impression that patients unwittingly tend towards a ruminative intellectualisation of emotional issues and situations (Torch, 1978;Hunter et al, 2003, which may be analogous to cognitive reappraisal. All these studies examine the voluntary suppression of emotional responses: in DPD such suppression is apparently involuntary (and largely resistant to volitional control), but it is reasonable to suppose that this will nevertheless engage similar inhibitory networks.…”

Global functioning and disability in dissociative disorders

“…Specific therapeutic approaches that target the comorbid dissociative disorder may be useful in helping to remedy dysfunction and improving the treatment outcome of these patients. Such approaches may include the development of emotion regulation and grounding skills (Cloitre et al, 2002;Cloitre et al, 2010), cognitive-behavioral techniques (Hunter et al, 2003;Hunter et al, 2005) Omnibus test on and WHO Disability Assessment Schedule II summary scores: p=0.008, post hoc between group comparisons not significant after correction for multiple testing.…”

The Circumplex Structure of Depersonalization/Derealization

“…Most theories of DP/DR have proposed that these symptoms are unidimensional in nature, in the sense that different factors that affect DP/DR have their effects on the same underlying psychological (e.g., Hunter et al, 2003) or biological (e.g., Sierra & Berrios, 1998) processes. The present research, however, contradicts such views.…”