What is dissociative personality disorder: symptoms

A few years ago, this disease was known as multiple personality. Films have even been made with characters who suffer from it, such as “Fragmented” by award-winning director M. Night Shyamalan. The truth is that it is a disorder in which a person has two or more personalities with different thoughts, actions and behaviors. What is dissociative identity disorder.

In the medical publication Medical News Today they explain that usually the cause of the disease is a trauma in the patients’ life. Mostly, if that the trauma occurred in childhood.

“Although there is no definite cure for dissociative identity disorder, long-term treatment can help people merge their personalities into one,” add mental health professionals.

What is dissociative identity disorder?

What is popularly known as multiple personality is dissociative identity disorder. People with this disease They have two or more distinct personalities.

They do not present themselves as simple changes in one’s mood, but rather are expressed very significant differences between these identities. So much so that they are usually complete opposites.

Professionals say that there is always a primary identity, which is your original personality, and which responds to your name. When a personality change occurs, the new person has a different life history, other characteristics, behaves differently and often responds to another name.

All personality They usually have an age, gender, mood, memory and even vocabulary of their own.

In general, patients who have this disease they make that change between both identities when they face something that stresses them or makes them feel bad.

What are the causes of having a dissociated identity?

The exact cause of dissociative identity disorder is still being studied by mental health professionals.

However, on Medical News Today they explain that “there is a strong link between the condition and trauma.” And they focus on people who have experienced a traumatic or abusive situation during the first ten or twelve years of life.

They explain that in countries where patients were studied, such as the United States and Canada, “90 percent of patients People suffering from dissociative identity disorder have been victims of serious childhood trauma.

The symptoms of having this disease are clearly the experience of two or more separate personalities, each with its own identity.

With this mental health problem there are also frequent gaps in memory and personal history, but not the normal forgetfulness that a person has every day, but rather the loss of memories important in life.

An obvious symptom is seeing that someone changes from one day to the next, or from one moment to the next, in their vocabulary, gestures, way of speaking, they may even smoke with one personality and not with the other, for example.

Other symptoms may occur with this change. How to have anxiety and fear that they cannot manage, to the point of becoming violent or very angry with themselves. Furthermore, it has been seen in some patients who do not remember what the other personality does at all.