Why detachment after trauma could be worse for your mind

The presence of dissociation, a profound sense of detachment from one's sense of self or surroundings, may indicate a high risk of developing severe post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, physical pain, depression, and social impairment in people who have experienced trauma, according to findings from the largest prospective study of its kind. "Dissociation may help someone cope in the aftermath of trauma by providing some psychological distance from the experience, but at a high cost--dissociation is often linked with more severe psychiatric symptoms," said lead author Lauren A. M. Lebois, PhD, director of the Dissociative Disorders and Trauma Research Program at McLean Hospital and an assistant professor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "Therefore, persistent derealization is both an early psychological marker and a biological marker of worse psychiatric outcomes later, and its neural correlates in the brain may serve as potential future targets for treatments to prevent PTSD," said senior author Kerry J. Ressler, MD, PhD, chief scientific officer at McLean Hospital and a professor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "These latest findings add to the growing list of discoveries from AURORA to help improve understanding about how to better prevent and treat adverse mental health outcomes after trauma," said Samuel McLean, MD, the organizing principal investigator of the AURORA Study and a professor of anesthesiology, emergency medicine, and psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.