Article: "Claims of Dissociative Identity Disorder on the Internet: A new epidemic of Munchausen Syndrome?"

[cara susanna]

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2468749924000930

Saw this on Reddit and thought you'd all find it interesting

 

[BuckeyeLove]

Flora Schreiber legit to blame for all of this.

 

[Manic Lobster]

Flora Schreiber legit to blame for all of this.

Although Schreiber is culpable, Cornelia Wilbur has to be held somewhat responsible as the "professional" in this case.

 

[futureapppsy2]

Eh, I don’t think this would be Munchausen so much as a psychosomatic disorder. It (often) lacks the deliberate lying component of Munchausen as well as the physically inducing symptoms part. Even people with Munchausen by Internet will typically do things like fake ports (or get real ports installed for shady reasons), shave their heads to appear like they are undergoing chemo, etc.

 

[DynamicDidactic]

Eh, I don’t think this would be Munchausen so much as a psychosomatic disorder. It (often) lacks the deliberate lying component of Munchausen as well as the physically inducing symptoms part. Even people with Munchausen by Internet will typically do things like fake ports (or get real ports installed for shady reasons), shave their heads to appear like they are undergoing chemo, etc.

Maybe it is my love for categorization but factitious disorder is a "related" disorder to somatic disorders in the DSM. At least based on that, I don't look at them as unrelated.

But I think that the article is arguing there are some actual cases of DID and an increase in factitious disorders imitating DID.

 

[futureapppsy2]

Maybe it is my love for categorization but factitious disorder is a "related" disorder to somatic disorders in the DSM. At least based on that, I don't look at them as unrelated.

But I think that the article is arguing there are some actual cases of DID and an increase in factitious disorders imitating DID.

Fair. I just tend to think the difference between knowingly lying/faking/inducing symptoms and having non-organic symptoms that aren’t consciously induced/faked is an important distinction between psychosomatic and factitious disorders.

 

[EnPsychlopedia]

I'm skeptical of DID to begin with, so I am absolutely skeptical of the current explosion of "cases." It really mirrors the post-Sybil explosion from the late-70s through the 90s, except with less of a clinician-generated iatrogenic "recovered memory" component and more of a social media attention-seeking component.

 

[ClinicalABA]

We had an alumni/local practitioner speak to our class during graduate school. She identified as a "DID" specialist who had "double digit" numbers of DID clients in her private practice. She claimed that anyone experience trauma was likely to dissociate, base on her "personal observations". Either something in the water or a bit of iatrogenesis going on. She also told us that she kept a baseball bat behind her desk in case any of the "alters" tried to intimidate her. Scary stuff. Even the most fringe and non-scientific students amongst us found her a bit unnerving. She was never invited back to talk to later cohorts, so at least there's that. Still in practice almost 30 years later, claiming to specialize in not only DID, but ADD/HD, as well as EMDR (of course)

 

[smalltownpsych]

As someone who has a lot of experience with working with victims of severe early childhood trauma, I do see a lot of dissociation and fragmented sense of self. With certain people, that can become like actual characters, but I see it more like a natural process of being able to adapt to different roles being exaggerated or disconnected because of trauma responses and other intense emotional states. Media and online portrayals of this phenomena are not helpful and emphasize the unrealistic aspects of these types of presentations. Therapists who reinforce these inaccurate portrayals are harmful. In my experience, helping patients to recognize that this is a normal process and that the treatment is exposure therapy and emotional regulation is the treatment. It is also important to treat the patient as one person with one body and one brain.