Memory for Masters
Here is my second blog post for my disease class. For this unit we really focused a lot about different mental disorders. For this we looked at a lot of the DSM-V which is a very long and detailed medical document that gives a lot of information about certain medical disorders. We also looked at autism directly by watching and reading Naoki Higashida's “The reason I jump”. Because of that it helped me to understand how mental disorders can affect how different people’s brain’s work. For this action project we were to choose a mental disorder of our choice, research how it can affect the body, and create an activity on how it might affect someone. The mental disorder that I decided to choose for this was amnesia. Here’s my analysis and activity below.
Amnesia is a process of losing or getting to lose parts of your memory over time. Symptoms usually start after some type of traumatic event or some type of accident. A person with dissociative amnesia may struggle to remember key details about themselves and their life, including their name, date of birth, where they live or work, or significant events.
Beta waves are the waves that do most of our active interaction in our brains. For that the body is learning how to do specific things and how to use said things. These waves are most affected by amnesia because with it you start to lose some of your memory. Along with that since beta waves allow for us to have active interactions with others, amnesia can cause us to lose parts of those interactions. The worse a person’s amnesia is the harder it is for beta waves to work properly inside of the brain. Here are two facts about amnesia below:
About 1.8% of Americans are diagnosed with amnesia in a year
Similar to otosclerosis, women have a higher chance of getting amnesia than men
Mokokoma Mokhonoana, an author and personality theorist, has amnesia and states that, “Desperateness sometimes makes us do something that gives someone, or some people, the impression that we suffer from forgetfulness.” From this quote we can understand that amnesia can sometimes make others feel desperate for something in a way. With that it might make someone with amnesia some type of way because of the way they are. Because of that it’s important to help those people anyway that we can.
One misconception that a lot of people have about amnesia is that it can cause someone to forget who they are. This misconception is false because the majority of people with amnesia more often forget past events in their lives. More often than not, people with amnesia can forget people around them or how to do specific things than just forgetting themselves as well.
If you have amnesia or if someone close to you might have amnesia here are some things you can do to help with treating it:
Making new plans - Create more opportunities for the person with that disorder to make new memories to make up for the lost ones.
Seek out a therapist - Talking to someone about memories or about how to cope with possible trauma.
Ask for medications - Sometimes doctors can also provide forms of medication for amnesia that can help to reduce possible anxiety from it.
To understand how it might feel to have amnesia, I wanted to make an interesting twist to the memory game. The goal with it is to give people a chance of how it might feel to have amnesia or how it might feel losing track of your memory. Now here’s a video on how to play:
Once you’ve finished feel free to answer this short survey about your experience playing - https://forms.gle/yqiwnxwr87e5YGEWA
Sources:
“Dissociative Amnesia Facts and Statistics: The Recovery Village.” The Recovery Village Drug and Alcohol Rehab, The Recovery Village Drug and Alcohol Rehab, 30 Dec. 2020, https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/mental-health/dissociative-amnesia/related/dissociative-amnesia-statistics/.
DSM-V document - published May 13th, 2013
Geralyn Dexter, LMHC. “What Causes Dissociative Amnesia?” Verywell Health, Verywell Health, 21 Dec. 2021, https://www.verywellhealth.com/dissociative-amnesia-symptoms-causes-treatment-5210967.
Sarah Jividen, RN. “All about the Different Types of Amnesia.” Verywell Health, Verywell Health, 18 Oct. 2021, https://www.verywellhealth.com/amnesia-types-5203061.
