Dissociative Identity Disorder

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You wake up, walk into your living room, look around, and your house looks as though you have had a wild party. You pick up your journal and it looks as though a child has written in it. You walk to your closet and see cloths you would never wear, but you live alone and you do not remember having anyone over. The date is March 19th, but the last day you remember is March 1st. This is a common occurrence to someone living with Dissociative identity disorder. There is a lot of controversy surrounding whether or not Dissociative identity disorder is real. Although there are many similarities between DID and other personality and dissociative disorders, DID is a very real and serious mental disorder.
Dissociative identity disorder or DID for short, was previously referred to as multiple personality disorder. DID is a dissociative disorder involving a disturbance of identity in which two or more separate and distinct personalities or identities, control an individual's behavior at different times (National Alliance of Mental Illness). Meaning, that the person with DID has to have more than one separate identity that “inhabits” them for a period of time.
DID patients may have many different identities or alters. When under the control of one alter, a person is usually unable to remember some of the events that happened while other personalities were in control. Many DID patients refer to this as black outs and are unaware that another alter was in control. The different alters may show differences in speech, attitudes, thoughts and gender orientation (National Alliance of Mental Illness). Alters are usually different from the person, they may have differences, such as allergies or even the need for eyeglasses (National Alliance of Ment...

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...ive identity disorder & multiple personalities. Retrieved from https://mentalhealthmatters2.wordpress.com/tag/chris-costner-sizemore/
Department of Psychology, of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (n.d.). Sybil isabel dorsett* the most famous case of multiple personality. Retrieved from http://jackiewhiting.net/Psychology/Sybil/Sybil.htm
Dissociative identity disorder - two famous cases. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/189/Dissociative-Identity-Disorder.html
Kluft, R. K. (1996). Dissociative identity disorder. Handbook of Dissociation, 337-366. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4899-0310-5_16
National Alliance of Mental Illness. (n.d.). Dissociative identity disorder. Retrieved from http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=By_Illness&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=165620&MicrositeID=0

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