Dissociative Identity Disorder

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Uncommon mental disorders are often overshadowed and do not receive the amount of research and attention they need to be properly understood. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), is a chronic, incurable disease that many believe to not be a real disorder but a result of an underlying issue. Dissociative Identity Disorder is a serious, genuine mental health disorder that needs to receive the appropriate attention and treatment in order to sufficiently help those who suffer from it. Dissociative Identity Disorder is a chronic mental health disorder that is characterized by the presence of two or more distinct personality states in the patient. The mental health disease was previously named …show more content…
It is the complexity and difficulty of understanding a DID diagnosis that makes experts doubt Dissociative Identity Disorder’s legitimacy. The symptoms of DID are similar to those of other psychiatric diseases, and they often get mixed up. It is also exceptionally uncommon, which makes studying DID that much more difficult. Specialist Natasha Tracy additionally adds, “A mere .01%-1% of the population are diagnosed with DID, and roughly 7% might have some form of an undiagnosed dissociative disorder” …show more content…
The brain scans of the different alters are noticeably different, which obviously cannot be intentionally stimulated by the patient or therapist. In one specific case, a 27 year-old patient possessing four separate alters underwent a number of neurological and psychological tests. Each identity was tested separately, and each one reacted completely independent from the rest. One of the tests was an electroencephalogram (EEG), which detects electrical activity in the brain using small, flat metal discs attached to the scalp. All of the patient’s alters had different EEG results. In another case, a different DID patient with four personalities was asked to take a psychological word association test. Each of his alters answered as if they were four separate people with no similarities of a single word association. Additionally, the alters of a DID patient can have distinct handwriting, voices, eyeglass prescriptions, food allergies, and other physical characteristics. It is extremely difficult for experts to understand how these bodily distinctions between alters is possible, causing them to dismiss the idea
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