Global psychogenic amnesia is characterized by a sudden loss of autobiographical memories for the whole of a person’s past. Psychogenic amnesia refers to cases of memory loss presumed to have a psychological, rather than neurological, cause and is either ‘global’ or situation-specific ( Kopelman, 1987, 2002 a). Psychogenic, fugue, retrograde, amnesia, autobiographical memory Introduction Findings are interpreted in terms of Markowitsch’s and Kopelman’s models of psychogenic amnesia, and with respect to Anderson’s neuroimaging findings in memory inhibition. In conclusion, the outcome in psychogenic amnesia, particularly those characterized by fugue, is better than generally supposed. By contrast, the two focal retrograde amnesia groups showed less improvement and continued to show a reversed temporal gradient. After 3–6 months, the fugue patients had improved to normal scores for facts and near-normal scores for events. The pattern of autobiographical memory loss differed between the psychogenic groups: fugue cases showed a severe and uniform loss of memories for both facts and events across all time periods, whereas the two focal retrograde amnesia groups showed a ‘reversed’ temporal gradient with relative sparing of recent memories. However, clinical depression, family/relationship problems, financial/employment problems, and failure to recognize the family were also statistically more common in that group. As anticipated, loss of the sense of personal identity was confined to the psychogenic group. While neurological cases were characterized by relevant neurological symptoms, a history of a past head injury was actually more common in our psychogenic cases ( P = 0.012), perhaps reflecting a ‘learning episode’ predisposing to later psychological amnesia. We found that our patients with psychogenic memory loss fell into four distinct groups, which we categorized as: (i) fugue state (ii) fugue-to-focal retrograde amnesia (iii) psychogenic focal retrograde amnesia following a minor neurological episode and (iv) patients with gaps in their memories. In particular, we examined the pattern of retrograde amnesia on an assessment of autobiographical memory (the Autobiographical Memory Interview). In the present study, we reviewed the case records and neuropsychological findings in 53 psychogenic amnesia cases (ratio of 3:1, males:females), in comparison with 21 consecutively recruited neurological memory-disordered patients and 14 healthy control subjects. Consequently, the literature on psychogenic amnesia is somewhat fragmented and offers little prognostic value for individual patients.
(b) signs or symptoms existing at the time of initial encounter that proved to be transient and whose causes could not be determined.(a) cases for which no more specific diagnosis can be made even after all the facts bearing on the case have been investigated.The conditions and signs or symptoms included in categories R00-R94 consist of:.
8, are generally provided for other relevant symptoms that cannot be allocated elsewhere in the classification. The Alphabetical Index should be consulted to determine which symptoms and signs are to be allocated here and which to other chapters. Practically all categories in the chapter could be designated 'not otherwise specified', 'unknown etiology' or 'transient'. In general, categories in this chapter include the less well-defined conditions and symptoms that, without the necessary study of the case to establish a final diagnosis, point perhaps equally to two or more diseases or to two or more systems of the body.
This chapter includes symptoms, signs, abnormal results of clinical or other investigative procedures, and ill-defined conditions regarding which no diagnosis classifiable elsewhere is recorded.