Current scientific interest in dissociative amnesia: A bibliometric analysis

Abstract

AbstractIn a bibliometric analysis, we used the PubMed search engine to count the number of publications identified by the search term “dissociative amnesia” for the years 2011–2020. We then counted publications from the same decade for five representative comparison disorders: “panic disorder,” “anorexia nervosa,” “obsessive–compulsive disorder,” “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,” and “bipolar disorder.” Our search yielded only 89 publications for “dissociative amnesia,” and only seven of these involved localized or selective amnesia for specific events. By contrast, we found between 3000 and 21,000 publications for each of the five comparison disorders during 2011–2020. We performed several additional secondary analyses, all of which suggested that the diagnosis of “localized or selective dissociative amnesia” has generated little scientific interest in recent years. Examining possible hypotheses to explain this lack of interest, it appears most likely that the concept of localized or selective dissociative amnesia is not widely accepted among scientists at present.