What is the difference between delusional disorder, and dissociative disorder?

I’ve never heard of delusional disorder. Delusions are a symptom of other disorders. Dissociative disorder is one in which a person has a break with reality and also loses a grip on their own sense of self.

You’re better off just Googling it Red.

As far as I know none of us here are qualified psychiatrists, and if you’re trying to deal with personal issues random advice from amatuers won’t help.

Good luck.

@JLoon. Just giving a random shot in the dark. The professionals are stumped. Figured that it could not hurt to ask Fluther.

@RedDeerGuy1 – Wow, tough situation.

But if your docs can’t figure it out that’s just more reason to look for a practicing specialist.

@JLoon Actually my Dr’s say that I am doing well. Just wondering about the lose ends, and curious about my mental health.

I got one wierd stare when I asked about my time traveling. It’s been 26,500+ years of visions and repeats that can not be diagnosed.

@RedDeerGuy1 – Glad you’re getting better. Keep doing what works!

@JLoon I’m not a psychiatrist, but I’ve worked in mental health for 6 years. I’ve picked up a lot of stuff. @RedDeerGuy1 is doing very well. He does a good job of relying on his doctors and comes here for easily understood snippets of information. I can only give snippets. I have in depth knowledge about only a little.

@Hawaii_Jake – Good to hear.

I thought that mental disorders could be divided into two groups. Non-delusional disorders would include depression, anxiety and ocd. Delusional disorders would include schizophrenia and paranoia.

Delusional disorder, previously called paranoid disorder, is a type of serious mental illness — called a “psychosis”— in which a person cannot tell what is real from what is imagined. The main feature of this disorder is the presence of delusions, which are unshakable beliefs in something untrue.

Although delusions might be a symptom of more common disorders, such as schizophrenia, delusional disorder itself is rather rare. Delusional disorder most often occurs in middle to late life.

Hope this helps. From a highly respected source: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9599-delusional-disorder

^thank you

Dissociative IDENTITY Disorder is the “new” term for MPD. Dissociating is also a symptom all of it’s own, often part of mental illness such as PTSD

With. Dellusional disorder the person believes things that are not true; perhaps they see themselves as extremely important and influential with connections to powerful people, or perhaps they believe people are out to get them out of jealousy or spite, or- in extreme cases, perhaps even a close friend or family member has actually been replaced with a spy, etc. The thing is, they are not “lying”, they are truly convinced of these things.

It is important to note that a delusion is a belief; thinking that something is true even if it has zero basis in reality.
This is different from a hallucination- which is where a person’s brain tricks them into seeing and or hearing things that are not there. (The demonic voices in their head laughing that the CIA has their whole house bugged).

Dissociative disorders are different. But a strong characteristic is lack of awareness/memory of specific events/behaviors.
For example, with dissociative fugue; Johnny is working at a factory and is being careless and is about to be maimed by a piece of machinery- the next thing Johnny knows, he is on the other side of town, unharmed, but has no idea how he got there. The trauma of the situation caused Johnny’s conciousness/ego to retreat and go into sleep mode while his body ran on auto pilot and he escaped the traumatic situation. Once his body was at a safe enough distance away, his Ego (that is your sense of self) woke up again but has no memory of how they got there.

Or Dissociative Personality Disorder (once upon a time was called Multiple Personality Disorder) the individual is not consciously aware that they have another “person” in their body (Like Dr. Jekhl and Mr. Hyde but no murder) it is a coping mechanism for trauma- their main personality is unable to cope or endure certain stressful situations, so their brain essentially “turns off” their persona, and invents a new “person” to temporarily take their place- this new identity often has different personality traits and quirks, different memories, even different likes and dislikes, and may even be a different age or gender than the original personality. But the different personalities do not share memories. And the patient does not realize that they have another personality that “takes over” all they know is that they have gaps in their memory and often “wake up” not knowing how they got there or what they were doing beforehand.

Basically, with Delusions, what they believe is true is different from reality.
With Dissociation, reality completely turns off as your brain reboots and by the time you are back to your senses you have no idea what happened while you were “out of it”.