Other Specified Dissociative Disorder

Other Specified Dissociative Disorder is a psychological diagnosis that is given when an individual who is experiencing distress due to their dissociative symptoms does not meet the criteria for Dissociative Identity Disorder. This disorder has four sub-types :

1. Having chronic dissociative symptoms including multiple identities, but with less separation or less severe separation than in dissociative identity disorder. In non-medical terms, this may be described as a median system. The system is either lacking clearly separated parts or lacking amnesia. This is the second best known dissociative disorder in the medical system community, after dissociative identity disorder, and many say that it is the only diagnostic label other than dissociative identity disorder that counts as a system. When an individual does not fit into either OSDD-1a or OSDD-1b neatly but still has a dissociative disorder and experiences distressing multiplicity, they may be diagnosed with simply OSDD-1.
2. Identity disturbance related to a long period of ‘intense coercive control and persuasion’. This can be related to cults, political imprisonment, or torture. The identity confusion as a result of these traumatic events is enough to cause serious dysfunction. It is typically not considered a true system by medical systems, as it did not typically develop in childhood (although coercive control and persuasion can be a component of ritual abuse that forms a system) and treatment typically significantly reduces the identity confusion.
3. Acute dissociative reactions to stressful events. This disorder is more short-term, and the dissociative reactions usually last for less than a month, or can be as short as hours to days. These reactions include dissociative symptoms, such as de-personalization, small degrees of amnesia, and a lack of integration in sensory-motor function, meaning some degree of a lack of awareness for one's body and senses.
4. Experiencing Dissociative Trance. A dissociative trance involves losing awareness of the outer world and not responding to others. This is involuntary. The individual may be temporarily paralyzed or lose consciousness. This diagnosis, like other dissociative disorders, cannot be diagnosed when the symptoms occur because of religious or cultural practices or drugs. Another word for this disorder can be "trance disorder", and was previously called dissociative trance as a separate diagnosis in the fourth DSM.

Other Specified Dissociative Disorder is less known than dissociative disorder, both in the plural community and outside of it, but systems caused by it are just as real as those formed by dissociative identity disorder or non-medical causes.