An overview of Multiple Personality Disorder

Multiple personality disorder (MPD), is a psychotic (neurosis) disorder categorized as one of the dissociative disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). Now the disorder is known as dissociative identity disorder (DID). This personality disorder is defined as a condition in which two or more different identities or personality states alternate spontaneously and involuntarily in controlling the patient's consciousness and behavior and function more or less independently of each other. The process by which the human brain creates and performs separate and distinct personality types in matter of seconds is a mystery and fascinated psychologists for years.

DID is considered as a culture-specific syndrome caused mostly by both childhood abuse and unstipulated long-term societal changes. Till the late 1970s Patients reporting DID symptoms are well thought-out to be medical curios or 'weird' and the disorder came into limelight because several cases were reported in the United States at that time. Childhood abuse is a factor in the development of DID, the female to male ratio for DID is about 9:1. The gender imbalance in reported cases is attributed to the higher rates of abuse of female children. Some section of psychologists thinks it may be a variant of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Both are medical conditions where dissociation is an important mechanism.

The most distinctive feature of DID is the development and surfacing of alternating personality states, or simply 'alters'. Patients with DID experience these 'alters' as unique individuals having different names, habits, vocabulary, general knowledge, predominant mood and behavioral traits. It is not odd for DID patients to have alters of different genders, ages, or nationality. Some patients have been reported with alters that are animals, or not even humans and even aliens. The typical DID patient has 2-10 alters, but patients with over one hundred are also reported.

The symptoms

Patients suffering from DID suffer from memory loss in the form of major chunks. Amnesia in DID is marked by gaps in the patient's memory over an extended period of time or sometimes they forget what had happened with them between particular periods of time. Most DID patients have amnesia, or "lose memory," for periods when another personality is "in action." Generally when a person alters and different personalities dictate them, they could not retain information what they did after they become normal.

People suffering from MPD experience de-personalization which is a dissociative symptom in which the patient believe that his or her body is illusory or imaginary, is altering, or is dissolving. Several DID patients feel the occurrences of depersonalization, they feel that they are out of their own body and watching something happening to there own body or sometimes they feel as if their body is changing in size, figure, color etc.

De-realization is a dissociative symptom in which the Patient experience or perceives the external environment as unreal Sometimes they feel the things they are watching like the walls, buildings, or other objects are unreal and are changing in shape and size.

Identity disturbances in DID result from the patient's nerve-racking or distressing experiences of the past which elicit the recurrence of these dissociated elements, the patient transforms or changes generally within few seconds-into his 'alter'. Any taxing situation may activate in altering of the personality of the DID person. The person then acts and conducts himself as if he is someone else.

The average age for the growth of 'alters' in the DID patients is found to be 5.9 years.1of the 3 of patients of DID experience visual or auditory hallucinations.

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