Identity

References and Further Reading

Dissociative Identity Disorder, Alejandra Swartz, December 10 2001, http://allpsych.com/journal/did.html

Work Cited

Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder), Diagnosis Dictionary, Psychology Today

http://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder

Dissociative

Identity Disorder

Other Symptoms

Causes and Symptoms

- Won't be able to remember large part of their childhoods (memory disruption)

-Unexplained events and be unaware of them

- Memory lost

- Flashbacks of trumatic events

- Different handwriting from time to time

- Suicidal tendencies

- Phobias

Dissociative Identity Disorder: Overview and Current Research, Sue-Mei Slogar, 2011, Student Pulse, http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/525/dissociative-identity-disorder-overview-and-current-research

Symptoms

Causes

Major symptoms are depression, mood swings and sleeping disorders.

(*Note: The following 'causes' are based on the hypothesis stating that DID is trauma-induced)

Patients may also suffer from much anxiety, panic attacks, and severe headaches.

- One major cause of D.I.D that is widely believed is severe physical or sexual abuse in childhood; many patients' histories show multiple accounts of such experiences.

- They may lack supportive or comforting relatives in their younger ages, and in some cases, may be influenced by other relatives with the disorder.

- Early lost of a parent is also believed to be a cause.

- Extreme stress might cause many different thoughts, feelings, and memories that will have different personailties

Dissociative Disorders, John F. Kihlstrom, University of California - Berkeley, http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/DisDis_ARCP2005.htm

A broken personality...

Why So Mysterious?

DID is one of the more unknown mental disorders due to a number of reasons:

- Rarity

- Co-morbidity: It frequently occurs in unison with another disorder.

- Malingering and factitious disorder: People may pretend to have DID for other reasons, such as for personal gain or another disorder.

- Symptoms of DID have been observed to vary over time; the disorder is never simply on or off.

- Lack of a proper definition: DID, along with other dissociative disorders, are topics of heavy debate because there is little agreement on their definitions.

How does it affect their daily lives?

The Media and Dissociative Identity Disorder: Examining the Facts and Fictions of Media Portrayals of DID, Robert T. Muller, Ph.D.,Talking About Trauma, January 19, 2013, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/talking-about-trauma/201301/the-media-and-dissociative-identity-disorder

Statistics

http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder

http://www.minddisorders.com/Del-Fi/Dissociative-identity-disorder.html

http://my.clevelandclinic.org/disorders/dissociative_disorders/hic_dissociative_identity_disorder_multiple_personality_disorder.aspx

http://www.aamft.org/imis15/content/Consumer_Updates/Dissociative_Identity_Disorder.aspx

niki stuff ^

What is D.I.D?

Again, due to DID being difficult to define and diagnose, it is in turn difficult to obtain information regarding its prevalence. No major studies have been done, but the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) does provide some approximate information:

-1~3% of the general population has DID. This takes up 1~5% of hospitalized patients.

- A person diagnosed with DID leads a relatively normal life. However, during instances where the person experiences intense emotion, such as fear, anger, stress or sadness, he or she may "switch" personalities in order to cope with the emotion.

- Changes in daily routine may also cause the other personalities to become more dominant and take control over the host body. This is in response to the change in the social environment around the person.

- DID is somewhere between 3 and 9 times more common in females.

A background

-Responsibilities may also be split up between personalities. For example, one personality may be in charge of the host's work life while another is in charge of taking care of the family.

-It is difficult for people with DID to make friends, as the different personalities of the host may individually like or dislike different people.

Definition Issues

DID is controversial because its definition is unclear, especially regarding its causes. There are two major hypotheses regarding this:

Statistics

1. DID is caused by memory disruptions caused by intense stress or trauma.

2. DID is an adverse side-effect of methods used by some therapists (e.g. hypnosis)

An important point to note is that DID became more diagnosed in from the 70's to the 90's. This, however, did not happen in all clinics overall, but rather concentrated around a certain few. This has been interpreted in two different ways:

Both arguments have strong support, and heated debate between the two hypotheses is ongoing.

Overview

1. Those who assert that DID is caused by trauma believe that the above occurred simply because some clinicians became more proficient at identifying it, while many others did not.

2. Those who believe that DID is therapist-induced think that those clinicians "identifying" DID were unintentionally instilling DID through methods such as hypnosis.

- After all, the personality states are more or less the usual personalities, only divided up and dissociated.

Introduction

- Of course, people without DID also adopt different personalities in different situations, but their 'switches' are not so drastic.

Memory Fragmentation in Dissociative Identity Disorder, Onno van der Hart, PhD, Hilde Bolt, MA, Bessel A. van der Kolk, MD, http://www.copingwithdissociation.com/Memory_Fragmentation_in_DID.pdf

- Therefore, one should not just read these points and instantly think that they have DID - These things are simply more drastic degrees of what most people do. The familiar idea that people have different voices inside them is a natural belief, and DID is different in that the personality states are distinctly split.

- Dissociative identity disorder (DID) or Multiple personality disorder (MPD) is a mental disorder in which the patient’s behavior is dictated by two or more distinct and dissociated identities or personalities that alternate their control over the affected person.

-However, the precise scientific definition of DID, along with those of other disorders related to dissociation of attention and memory, remain unclear and not agreed upon.

Film: Identity

Treatment

The 2003 psychological horror film, "Identity", portrays a serial killer who suffers from a severe case of DID, giving him 10 distinct personality states. In the film, each one is portrayed as a person possessing his/her own name.

The film also takes the dissociation to a more literal pop-psychological interpretation - The film involves the personality states killing and dying, and the events take place in a hotel inside the killer's mind.

The Sociocognitive Model of Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Reexamination of the Evidence, David H. Gleaves, Texas A&M University, https://www.ptsdforum.org/c/gallery/-pdf/1-41.pdf

On the popular media forum Reddit, there have been multiple AMA's (Ask Me Anything) threads from people diagnosed with DID. Based on the threads, it appears as if people diagnosed with DID typically give each personality a name. As well, depending on the person, these personalities will or will not age with the host.

As of current, there is no solid treatment for persons affected by DID. Guidelines for treatment suggest a broad and diverse style, from various sources. Common methods include hypnotherapy and talking to only one identity or personality. As well, therapy for DID is phase oriented; patients start therapy with numerous personalities, and therapists aim to slowly reduce them.

Stage one focusses symptoms and relieving distress in the patient. Side affects, such as other disorders are addressed at this stage. Stage two focuses on exposure to past traumatic memories and prevention of re-dissociation. Finally, stage three focuses on reconnecting separate identities back into one single identity.

In Popular Media

Hippocampal and Amygdalar Volumes in Dissociative Identity Disorder, Eric Vermetten; Christian Schmahl; Sanneke Lindner; Richard J. Loewenstein; J. Douglas Bremner, Am J Psychiatry 2006, http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleID=96513

Chan Gwak

Jimmy Zhang

Niki Wong

Alters in Dissociative Identity Disorder Metaphors or Genuine Entities?, Herald Merckelbach, Grant J. Devilly, Eric Rassin, 2002, Clinical Psychology Review http://www.devilly.org/Publications/did.pdf

Apparent Amnesia on Experimental Memory Tests in Dissociative Identity Disorder: An Exploratory Study, Madelon L. Peters, Seger A. Uyterlinde, John Consemulder, and Onno van der Hart, Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, http://www.onnovdhart.nl/articles/Peters_et_al_Apparent_amnesia_1998.pdf