I am interested in psychology. I like to know the causes of amnesia and also how the person would react if she/he have amnesia. Actually what's the different between amnesia and memory loss?Can anyone explain me?
Thanks in advance

For all practical purposes, amnesia is memory loss! The cause(s) are varied but can be divided into 2 primary categories: Organic and functional. Organic would relate to brain damage, physical trauma or neurologic disease. Functional relates to psychological causes such as painful and disturbing experiences, etc.

Usually amnesia falls into two additional sub-categories. Anterograde, meaning an inability to form new memories or retrograde, an inability to recall past events. Almost all amnesia is partial, loss of large blocks but not all memory. (There is also global amnesia which relates to all of the senses, but the condition is extremely rare).

Within these categories there are various other types and sub-types that relate to the extent, duration, age of onset, etc of the condition. It gets pretty complicated.

It is unlikely that depression would cause or lead to amnesia.

For a brief, uncomplicated and reasonably thorough description refer to Description of amnesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnesia)

In order to obtain more detailed information on any aspect of amnesia, see Merck Manual, Amnesia (http://www.merck.com/search/userSearch.do?strSearchTerm=amnesia&x=0&y=0)

Hope this helps. Any further questions please ask.