Falling in love: dream or dissociation?

Dissociation is defined as a disruption in usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity or perception of the environment. Dissociative disorders are closely related to childhood abuse or/and neglect. Trauma related intrusions might lead to dissociative şashbacks. It has been often misdiagnosed as affective disorders, impulse control disorder or borderline personality disorder among others. We want to present a case that brought by her mother for irritability, destructive behavior, and depression after falling in love. She reported depression in her daily life and she felt helpless. In two weeks period, a range of symptoms and behaviors including amnesia, disturbance in sense of self, rapid shifts in mood and behavior, perplexing shifts in access to knowledge, memory, and skills as well as auditory and visual hallucinations revealed. Her mother reported a history of being able to see two different states in her daughter: a fourteen years old intelligent student, trusting state in which she speaks in a childish voice and having high-risk behavior like going off. Occasionally, she did not recognize people familiar to her. Supportive interviews as well as quetiapine and valproic acid were helpful for stabilization during the acute dissociative symptoms. In our interviews, psychological education for family, the stability of relationship between clinicians and patient has become the focus.