Multiple Personality Disorder

[actressnwriter]

Hello, my name is Emily and I am a High school student. For an upcoming project I am to write a paper on a topic of my choosing. I have chosen to write about MPD. I will not tell you my thesis, as it may effect you answers.


What I would like to get from you, is for you to answer a few questions, give my your age(optional) and your area of expertise/ degree in medicine if you have one. If you are not a practitioner, you are still welcome to participate.

Do you recognize MPD as a valid mental condition?

Have you ever diagnosed MPD?

Do you personally believe in MPD? Why or why not?

What are your criteria, or the medical fields criteria to classify something as a mental illness?



Thank you in advance for any of your responses.

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[Therapist4Chnge]

To clarify, MPD is better known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

Do you recognize MPD as a valid mental condition?
DID is recognized in the DSM-IV-R, which is our diagnostic manual for psych. Some people are skeptical about it, though I believe that it exists, though maybe not in the #'s that are diagnosed.

Have you ever diagnosed MPD? Do you personally believe in MPD? Why or why not?
I've seen it before, though I haven't formally diagnosed it (quite rare to see out there).

What are your criteria, or the medical fields criteria to classify something as a mental illness?
Check into the DSM-IV-R for the criteria for various diagnoses.

 

[amichael2587]

I recommend reading the book Sybil (or watching the movie) by Flora Rheta Schreiber. One of the enigma's of MPD is that treatment could actually trigger more personalities, or ir could have produced the original ones for that matter. For that reason many Ph.D.'s were slow to believe the disorder existed without suggestion from the therapist.

As in the case of Sybil's, her first indication of having Dissociative Identity was a series of fugue states - periods of amnesia usually precipitated by a stressfull episode.

Check out wikipedia.com for more info

 

[cara susanna]

Sybil is believed to have been an iatrogenic case--meaning, her therapist made her believe that she was a dissociative personality.

For DID books that haven't been discredited yet, I recommend When Rabbit Howls, The Flock, Broken Child, and Little Girl Fly Away (not about DID but helps one understand dissociation).

 

[Rapunzel]

The Myth of Sanity: Divided Consciousness and the Promise of Awareness
By Martha Stout
Published by Viking, 2001
ISBN 0670894753, 9780670894758

I recommend the above book for a rational explanation of dissociative disorders. Everybody dissociates, some more than others.

I recognize DID as a legitimate mental disorder, and I know people who have it, although I haven't treated this disorder myself or diagnosed it (I have limited experience so far as a clinician). Like a lot of disorders, I think that there are people who really do have DID, and also some who think they do, or like the idea of having this disorder, and may not actually have it. And it is possible for therapists to create the appearance of this disorder, so caution is needed there too. It makes sense to me that people who have experienced a lot of trauma and are not able to cope with it as themselves would psychologically distance themselves from what they can't handle, and that some would create or split off parts of themselves whose function it is to handle the trauma. If you have ever been in a car wreck, you might experience that as if you were watching it happen to someone else, not you. That is dissociation, and it protects you from trauma. For a few people it can get to be habitual to create an alter to handle almost any problem that comes up. Everyone's psyche has nicks and scrapes and pockmarks. Some have deeper fractures than others. I can relate to DID, although I don't have it, because I have ego fragments that fill various different roles, and even though all of my fragments share the same identity, memory, etc., I sometimes experience them as being at odds with each other. You have probably experienced normal levels of dissociation, as when really engrossed in a movie or a book, and you lose track of what is happening around you, or when you do things on "automatic" such as driving or walking a familiar route without thinking about what you are doing. Like almost anything, it becomes a disorder when it goes to extremes that cause problems with functioning in life.

 

[airmont]

One of Irvin Yalom's clients in "Love's executioner" apparently had DID.

 

[PsyDApplicant08]

Hello, my name is Emily and I am a High school student. For an upcoming project I am to write a paper on a topic of my choosing. I have chosen to write about MPD. I will not tell you my thesis, as it may effect you answers.


What I would like to get from you, is for you to answer a few questions, give my your age(optional) and your area of expertise/ degree in medicine if you have one. If you are not a practitioner, you are still welcome to participate.

Do you recognize MPD as a valid mental condition?

Have you ever diagnosed MPD?

Do you personally believe in MPD? Why or why not?

What are your criteria, or the medical fields criteria to classify something as a mental illness?



Thank you in advance for any of your responses.

I believe that Dissociative Identity Disorder exists, but I think it would be a better idea if you didn't use the term Multiple Personality Disorder (except to reference a past name). A good book for this would be "The Flock". If you are looking to write a good paper and want to get precise criteria, look it up in the DSM. Good luck.

 

[Psych1212]

To clarify, MPD is better known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

Do you recognize MPD as a valid mental condition?
DID is recognized in the DSM-IV-R, which is our diagnostic manual for psych. Some people are skeptical about it, though I believe that it exists, though maybe not in the #'s that are diagnosed.

Have you ever diagnosed MPD? Do you personally believe in MPD? Why or why not?
I've seen it before, though I haven't formally diagnosed it (quite rare to see out there).

What are your criteria, or the medical fields criteria to classify something as a mental illness?
Check into the DSM-IV-R for the criteria for various diagnoses.

I was planning on responding, but this basically sums up my view, so I'll simply co-sign it...

One resource I encourage you to explore is The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (formerly The International Society for the Study of Dissociation). Their website will have quite a bit of information for you.

http://www.isst-d.org/


I'd also encourage you to look into the conceptualization of dissociation as a construct that lies on a continuum and is experienced in both pathological and nonpathological forms...Quite a bit of published research views dissociation in this manner.

 

[actressnwriter]

Thank you guys. I will look into everything you said.