Dissociative Identity Disorder Research Paper

Dissociative identity disorder is a condition that has continued to baffle scientists for many years. In this disorder, two or more distinct personalities are present in the individual. These personalities can have their own abilities, history, and memories. These personalities are also capable of taking control of the patient’s behavior. This paper mostly focuses on the possible causes, controversy associated with DID, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatments. Dissociative identity disorder is known to have a direct correlation to severe childhood trauma (such as emotional, physical, or sexual abuse). Scroppro, Drob, Weinberger, and Eagle state in their research that their DID (dissociative identity disorder) participants
reported higher accounts of childhood trauma then their psychiatric control group did, and the more DID participants specifically reported experiencing more accounts of physical and sexual abuse than the control group. DID is believed to be a coping strategy for dealing with the long-term effects of childhood abuse. Scroppro, Drob, Weinberger, and Eagle specify in their research that the type of childhood trauma that is most prevalent is sexual abuse. Childhood sexual abuse is believed to possibly be a major cause in dissociative identity disorder because this type of abuse is particularly severe and invasive.
Another theory that exists as a possible cause of dissociative identity disorder is that it might be caused by external forces. Scroppro, Drob, Weinberger, and Eagle found patients suffering from dissociative identify disorder may be more vulnerable to comply with the demands of therapists or even media outlets. Both factors could certainly play a role in the cause of dissociative identity disorder. It is hard for some researchers to believe that patients could be externally made to form other complex personalities that can have dimension and different abilities that the original personality does not possess. Dissociative identity disorder is believed to be very controversial topic because there are some obvious signs and some subtle sings of dissociative identity disorder. In some of the obvious signs, when some individuals change from one personality to another, they also change certain abilities about them (like which hand they write with,
ext.). Brand, Myrick, Loewenstein, Classen, Lanius, McNary, Pain, and Putnam mention in their article that people with DID take part in high risk behaviors, which means that they can be a danger to his/her self or others. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders says that that the disruption in identity involves discontinued sense of self, which in effect causes alterations in behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and/or sensory-motor functioning. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders also says other symptoms that may conclude frequent gaps when trying to recall everyday events, important personal information, or traumatic events that are inconsistent with normal forgetfulness. These symptoms are very real for people who suffer with dissociative identity disorder and probably cause them a great deal of distress. These symptoms most likely interfere with DID sufferer’s daily functions, effect their social, and occupational situations in a negative way. Dissociative identity disorder can be such a complicated condition that it can be difficult to diagnose.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders describes that DID can get mixed up with other disorders such as major depressive disorder, bipolar disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, psychotic disorders, substance/medication-induced disorders, personality disorders, conversion disorder, seizure disorders, and factitious disorder and malingering. Dissociative identity disorder’s symptoms are so similar to the symptoms of these disorders that patients with DID are often diagnosed with the wrong disorder. When patients are diagnosed wih the wrong disorder, then the treatment they could be receiving will most not likely be helping the patients road to
recovery. There are not many treatment options for dissociative identity disorder, but there is something called psychotherapy. Psychotherapeutic work deals with patients that have dissociative disorders, like DID. Brand, Myrick, Loewenstein, Classen, Lanius, McNary, Pain, and Putnam completed a study of what therapists thought were the best techniques for treating dissociative identity disorder and dissociative disorder, and what they found was that experts generally recommended three stages for treating these disorders. The first stage of what experts say are generally how DID and DD should be treated are skills-building in areas such as emotion regulation, impulse control, interpersonal effectiveness, grounding, containment, challenging trauma based conative distortions, and maintaining safety. The middle stage that experts suggest the use of occasional modified exposure or abbreviation techniques balanced with the core, which is foundational interventions. In the last stage, more research is needed, but it is suggested that the treatment is more individualized. Even with this treatment Brand, Myrick, Loewenstein, Classen, Lanius, McNary, Pain, and Putnam explain that the data suggests that the unification of self-states only occur within a minority of patients with DID. This shows that a lot more research needs to be done on the techniques within the treatment of DID. There are also different approaches within psychotherapy. A couple different approaches are psychoanalytical approach and the behavioral analysis approach. Maclntosh demonstrates in her research that psychoanalytical approaches offer the clinician ideas that inform the analyst about engaging with the patient into their world for exploration and information about their childhood trauma. Phelps explains in his research that behavior analysis of dissociative identity disorder clarifies and can get a better understanding of the behaviors that come along with DID. In conclusion, there is still a lot of research that needs to be done on dissociative identity disorder. It is still not known what the exact cause is, but there is an obvious correlation between severe childhood trauma and DID. Hopefully in the future there will be treatments and therapies that can help to equip patients with DID to better cope with their symptoms and maybe eventually the unification of the mind into one personality.