A state of feeling unreal, in which there is a sense of detachment from self and surroundings.
Depersonalization is often accompanied by derealization.
It is rarely serious and usually comes on suddenly and may last for moments or for hours.
Depersonalization most often occurs in people with anxiety disorders.
Other causes include drugs and temporal lobe epilepsy.
n. a state in which a person feels him- or herself becoming unreal or strangely altered, or feels that the mind is becoming separated from the body. Minor degrees of this feeling are common in normal people under stress. Severe feelings of depersonalization occur in *anxiety disorder, in states of *dissociation, in depression and schizophrenia, and in epilepsy (particularly temporal-lobe epilepsy). See also derealization; out-of-body experience.
n. (pl. neuroses) any long-term mental or behavioural disorder in which contact with reality is retained and the condition is recognized by the sufferer as abnormal: the term and concept originated from Freud. A neurosis essentially features anxiety or behaviour exaggeratedly designed to avoid anxiety. Defence mechanisms against anxiety take various forms and may appear as phobias, obsessions, compulsions, or sexual dysfunctions. In recent classifications, the disorders formerly included under the neuroses have been renamed. The general term is now anxiety disorder; hysteria has become *conversion disorder; amnesia, fugue, and depersonalization are *dissociative disorders; obsessional neurosis is now known as *obsessive–compulsive disorder; and depressive neurosis has become *dysthymia. Psychoanalysis has proved of little value in curing these conditions; *behaviour therapy and *SSRIs are effective in many cases. —neurotic adj.... neurosis
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