Multiple Personality Disorder

Something that I have been interested in learning more about has been Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID formerly know as Multiple Personality Disorder. This disorder happens when one goes through a tragic event or a lot of stress. I remember watching a drama where the main character had DID, that was the first time I heard of this disorder, but I didn't learn anything about it because I didn't believe that it really existed. Lately, the issue has caught my eye again after I learned about it in my psychology class. That's when I realized that this disorder was real and it really happened to people.

One thing that I know for sure about Dissociative Identity Disorder is that the people that go through this suffers a lot in their lives. Now I've studied my share of Psychology, and learned a little about what causes this disorder and if it can be cured or not. While I was researching I saw this Blog post about DID. The Blog post is called Perhaps We All Have Multiple Personality Disorder, http://www.postednote.com/2009/11/08/perhaps-we-all-have-multiple-person.... This blog post caught my attention because the blog post was about this book “Switching Time” by Dr. Richard Baer. The book is about a girl who has multiple personality disorder, she had 17 personalities.

"People who suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder or MPD, have normally suffered something tragic in their lives that cause them to split mentally in order to protect themselves. Don’t we all do that when we are in stressful situations? We become someone who we aren’t, sometimes only momentarily, but for a brief moment we don’t even recognize ourselves. The difference is we are aware of this behavior when it happens, but what if we were suddenly forced into extreme situations repeatedly – how would we handle it?"

The quote I chose here is basically saying that MPD happens to people that go through something tragic in their lives, and to protect themselves they mentally split. It also says how we all do that sometimes but the difference is we know it and MPD patients don' t. When we change that's intentionally but MPD patients don't get a choice they have to deal with the disorder.

Dissociative Identity Disorder is unknown to a lot of people I think because its very uncommon. When I was in my Psychology class and my professor started to give a lecture about DID was I surprised that some people go through so much bad thing in their lives that eventually they become a victim of this disorder.

In another article, Dissociative Identity Disorder and the Cycle of Violence.There was this one statement that stood out for me "Treatment may vary, but the general consensus involves steps of psychotherapy." Firstly, the therapist should foster an attitude of respect of each personality for each other. Secondly, a therapist should establish meaningful conversation with as many personalities as possible without siding with any one of them. Lastly, the therapist should help the personalities to merge together to become one complete integrated personality (Howe, 1984). Dissociative identity disorder does not cure itself, thus treatment is extremely important."

The quote I chose here is basically saying how a therapist should start treatment with a DID patient. The steps of each treatment and also that DID doesn't cure itself and it needs treatment.This statement stood out for me because it talks about the treatment of this disorder. I think Its great that it can be cured with the help of a therapist. Also treatment will take time And complete cure is not guaranteed its still great that there is hope.