Multiple Personality Disorder - Symptoms and Solutions

Multiple personality disorder, which is also known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), is a psychotic (neurosis) disorder in which a person suffering from mental disturbance becomes dissociated into more than one personalities. These personalities dominate and control the behavior of the patient alternatively or depending on the mental stress condition.

Multiple personality disorder can be caused by many reasons such as childhood abuse, social environment of the patient, problems in brain functioning, excess exposure (i.e., repeated episodes) to some traumatic situations, lack of proper support from someone in countering stress-filled situations, influence of a particular personality may be from the surrounding or from history, etc. Situations where mental stress and pressure are high, induce vulnerability of a person to this disorder.

A person suffering from multiple personality disorder undergoes change in personality in just a few seconds. The patient then acts as a completely different person than he/she is in reality, the patient imitates characteristic and behavioral traits, name, history, etc., of the person he/she thinks he/she is. People suffering from multiple personality disorder sometimes undergo change in personality where they have alters of different genders, sexual orientations, ages, or nationalities. Some people alter to something that is not even human; they alter to some spiritual force, sometimes to different animals, sometimes to some extraterrestrial life force, etc. Generally, people suffering from this disorder have about 2 to 10 alters, but at some situations, there have been as many as some hundred alterations.

Symptoms of Multiple Personality Disorder

Loss of Memory
Patients suffering from multiple personality disorder lose their memory in major chunks. They do not remember things that have happened in their lives over an extended period or sometimes they forget what had happened with them between particular periods of time. For example, people forget everything about their childhood or sometimes they forget about whatever happened during a time period, say some 3-4 years of time. When a person alters and a different personality dominates them, they do not remember what they did after they become normal.

Lose Contact with Own Personal Reality
Depersonalization is another symptom people suffering from this disorder experience. Patients feel as if their body is getting dissolved, sometimes they feel as if they are out of their own body and watching something happening to their own body but do not have any control over it, sometimes they feel as if their body is not real and is changing in size, shape, color, etc.

Alteration in Perception
A patient also experiences derealization as one of the symptoms of this disorder. A patient feels that whatever he/she is looking at, is changing in shape, size or color. Sometimes, they feel as if the things they are watching are not real.

Any stressful situation may trigger altering of the personality of the person who is suffering from this disorder. The person then acts and behaves as if he/she is someone else.

Treatment Options for Multiple Personality Disorder

There has been a history of misdiagnosis of the patients suffering from this disorder. Once this disorder is diagnosed correctly, the patient needs to undergo treatment, which varies from months to some years. Types of treatments available are: psychotherapy, which helps in treating the disorder with the help of the patient's condition. A patient is treated mentally in order to confirm the improvements in his/her mental situation. Once the diagnosis is done, the doctor describes drugs, which the patient has to take from time to time. Depending upon the improvements/results, the doctor has to change medications. Hypnosis is used to understand the cause of the disorder that the patient is suffering from. Hypnosis offers great help in deciding the pattern of treatment. Along with psychotherapy, medications and hypnosis, some alternative treatments are also available which help in inducing effects of the medications and psychotherapy, and relaxing the body of the patient. The alternative therapies available are: hydrotherapy, botanical medicine, therapeutic massage, yoga, and homeopathic treatment.