Re: Real Mental illness was Re: NYC Teacher Who Vanished Before Ferry REscue Says She Lost Her Memory


"Yeah Rightie" <yeahrighty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:jogne41s2mr6tq1n8m2oepjs3ud73gjjss@xxxxxxxxxx
On alt.true-crime, Sun, 5 Oct 2008 18:39:51 -0700 (PDT), Re: NYC
Teacher Who Vanished Before Ferry REscue Says She Lost Her
Memory, ParallelCooler@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Oct 5, 7:27 pm, "Chocolic" <chatter...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hannah Upp breaks her silence via Facebook

BY JOHN LAUINGER

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Saturday, October 4th 2008, 10:49 PM
Hannah Upp, the Manhattan teacher whose disappearance sparked a 19-day
search, has broken her silence to claim she had a rare amnesialike
disorder.

In a short message on her Facebook page, Upp said she was suffering from
dissociative fugue when she was found nearly drowned in the water off
Staten
Island last month.

The condition is triggered by stress or trauma and causes people to
suddenly
flee their homes - and forget their past lives.

RELATED: MISSING PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER SAVED AFTER JUMPING OFF S.I. PIER

"As is typical of a case of dissociative fugue, I was not aware of my
own
identity and I emerged from the episode with essentially no memory of
what
happened during the time I was missing," Upp wrote to her supporters.

Upp, 23, a Spanish teacher from Oregon, disappeared from her Hamilton
Heights apartment Aug. 29 just before she was to start her second year
as a
NYC Teaching Fellow at Thurgood Marshall Academy in Harlem.

She was found floating unconscious in the water off Staten Island on
Sept.
16 in what police labeled an apparent suicide attempt.
In between, Upp was seen several times around the city and was spotted
twice
in four days checking her e-mail at an Apple store.

Dr. Ankur Saraiya, a psychiatrist and assistant clinical professor at
Columbia University, said that sort of behavior isn't typical of
dissociative fugue.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/10/04/2008-10-04_hannah_upp_brea...
-----------------
The comments at the end of the article are funny.

This recent one cracked me up:
tillzen Oct 5, 2008 12:31:54 PM Report Offensive Post
I can relate completely! EVERY pint of ice cream I completely consumed
was
an episode of dissociative fugue disorder. First you smell burnt
almonds,
and the next thing you know, you are waking up in Staten Island with a
sticky mouth, and potato chip crumbs are wedged EVERYWHERE! I MUST
remember
to use Facebook more effectively! It was built for explaining away
suicide
attempts, breaking blind dates, and allowing college stalkers to
reconnect.

------------------------------------
Chocolic

Wonderful!

I can now blame my missteps on being "all fugued up" ;)

I realise mental illness is a joke to many people and when they
aren't laughing about mentally ill people they are pushing
crippled people out of their wheelchairs and watching them thrash
around but Fugue or Dissociated Fugue is a very real thing.

The DSM-IV defines as:

* sudden, unexpected travel away from home or one's customary
place of work, with inability to recall one's past,
* confusion about personal identity, or the assumption of a
new identity, or
* significant distress or impairment.

The Merck Manual defines Dissociative Fugue as:

One or more episodes of amnesia in which the inability to
recall some or all of one's past and either the loss of one's
identity or the formation of a new identity occur with sudden,
unexpected, purposeful travel away from home.

In support of this definition, the Merck Manual further defines
Dissociative Amnesia as:

An inability to recall important personal information,
usually of a traumatic or stressful nature, that is too extensive
to be explained by normal forgetfulness.

We also sometimes laugh about murder here. And other terrible things.
Awfully base ain't it? Fugue off you sanctimonious fuguehead. ("Cripples,"
Mr. Enlightenment? Get away.)

jc


.

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