Dissociative Identity Disorder: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatments

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What is Dissociative Identity Disorder?

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is a mental disease that evolves from being abused during early childhood years.  Even though the mistreatment does keeps on occurring and becomes very excessive, the diagnosis of it doesn’t usually happen until individuals reach adulthood.  Nevertheless, not everyone who were abused suffers from DID.  Asking people to reminiscent events that happened many years ago may lead to subjective accounts and false claims due to inability to accurately remember being abused.

Causes of Dissociative Identity Disorder

In reference to dissociative identity disorder, there is a set of causes that can be referred to for diagnosing.  First, is the inherited ability to dissociate easily.  Other causes are being influenced by other relatives who have dissociative disorders or symptoms, not having a comforting or supportive person to counterbalance abusive family member(s), and obviously being a victim of persistent episodes of harsh physical or sexual abuse in childhood.  There isn’t a proven specific cause of dissociative identity disorder.  By using the theory that the condition develops when a child thinks of an altered personality to form, it is then a reaction to experiencing traumatizing event(s) while the child’s mental growth has long ways to go before reaches adulthood.

Four Factors Regarding Dissociative Identity Disorder

From 1984 to 1987, Psychiatrist Richard Kluft’s research on multiple personality disorder (MPD) led to him to proposing a theory with four factors to initiate the beginnings of MPD.  The same research also directed him to see the condition as a chronic dissociative post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that originated during childhood.  As mentioned in the previous paragraph, a person having some sort of congenital attribute of dissociation can influence another person to also suffer DID.  Having the potential to dissociate can be seen in the results from hypnotizability ratings.  The second factor, according to Kluft, is the traumatic experiences in early childhood may lead to larger potential psychodynamic dividedness as the personality development is disturbed. Another factor is the continuation of emotional and/or social deprivation causing the children to not spontaneously recover from abuses.  The last factor is the psychodynamic and extrinsic factors, including psychosocial influences, forms the final presentation that lets mental health professional recognize MPD exhibited by an individual.

Major Symptoms of Dissociative Identity Disorder

There are four major symptoms experienced by people suffering from dissociative identity disorder.  Amnesia in DID can lead to not remembering one’s childhood.  Nevertheless, some people don’t remember long periods of their past.  For more recent events, they can’t remember what they did when one personality takes control and another one is “out.”  The second major symptom, depersonalization, is the sense that his or her body is surreal, changing or dissolving.  The third one, de-realization, is having the perception that their environment is fake and may see buildings, automobiles, or other objects as changing in either color, shape, or size.  DID sufferers may even not recognize their own close friends or family members.  Identity disturbances is the last major symptom.  It involves the personality that was formed in response to childhood trauma that goes to seek psychiatric help.  The patients are usually frightened by their dissociative experiences.  Examples of it are losing awareness of hours, or days, and meeting people who claim to know them by another name, and feeling “out of body.”  Psychiatrists treating the main personality refer it as the “host.”

More Symptoms of Dissociative Identity Disorder

The other symptoms for people suffering from dissociative identity disorders are alcohol and drug abuse, eating disorders, and depression.  They may also experience mood swings, psychotic-like symptoms (including auditory and visual hallucinations and suicidal tendencies.  They may suffer from sleep disorders such as insomnia, night terrors, and sleepwalking.  Forming compulsions and rituals is another symptom for DID.  They may experience self-sabotage, headaches, anxiety, panic attacks, and phobias that lead to flashbacks or reactions to stimuli or “triggers.”

Detoxify

Once medical professionals diagnose dissociative identity disorder sufferers as victims of abuse, they will be treated with therapy that is meant to detoxify his or her environment by ceasing all types of abuse.  Patients need to function by self very effectively, tolerate anything that affects how they understand himself or herself, and they must ameliorate any issues that are concerned with trust.

Overseeing Patients During Treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder

The professionals giving treatment need to closely observe and record the patients’ emotions.  They also must encourage the sufferers of DID to practice healthy coping behaviors.  The primary focus would be teaching the patients to contain and control their symptoms.  Also, the patients’ sense of power will be emphasized.  It would be done by having the patients design and choose the techniques to use and when to utilize it.  This way they will feel the sense of being in charge of themselves, and can begin to work with feelings of helplessness.  Patients won’t see themselves as victims of the past once they find new ways to control and contain their symptoms.  For any treatment plan that is considered for the patient, he or she must find ways to deal with the emotional turmoil that comes along; the methods must make it safe for the patient to go through with the treatment plan.

Resources About Dissociative Identity Disorder

Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders

National Alliance on Mental Illness

Psych Central – What is Dissociation?

MedicineNet.com

Child Abuse & Neglect, Dissociative Identity Disorder

Resource by S.Lee

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