Essay On Dissociative Identity Disorder

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Living a normal life seems to be everyone’s ultimate lifestyle, but there are some people that cannot control what happens in their lives because it can be a social, behavioral, or environmental effect that can troublesome their daily tasks of life. There are so many disorders that can cause issues for an individual’s well-being, and one disorder is the dissociative identity disorder (DID). According to Zimbarodo (2009), “Dissociative identity disorder is a complicated, long-lasting posttraumatic disorder, which was previously called multiple personality disorder” (p. 550). In some cultures, DID is explain by the presence of demon or spirit possessions, but in the Western society, this disorder has been vindicated to seek serious attention and is now included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (Kluft, 2005, p. 635).
To be diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, an individual will have an impulsive and transitory disturbance of identities, which involves two or more separate and discrete personality states or identities that controls their behavior at different times (Zimbardo, 2009, p. 550). The dissociation process will cause the person, or host, who may be unable to deal with overpowering stress, to be control by an alternative personality called alters. Each of these alters may have different speeches, mannerisms, attitudes, thoughts, or gender orientations (Kluft, 2005, p. 638). One individual may have up to one hundred different alters and when the alter is being governed, the individual usually does not remember some of the events that occurs because he or she mentally switches into a whole new human being (Stickley & Nickeas, 2006, p. 185). Gilling (2009) stated that...

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...th this man, but she was treating her children the only way she knows how, which was how she was raised. Lynn was eventually hospitalized because of extreme weight loss and was immediately assigned to a government mental health case worker. Lynn’s case was very extreme due to the exposure of her long term trauma. She was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder and obsessive compulsive personality disorder. Her therapy sessions exposed her to major traumatic memories and it would cause her to collapse on the floor and reenact her past. Her team of therapists integrated and applied theories of structural dissociation, attachment, and mentalization to provide a foundation of treatments for Lynn. Their work load was very challenging with Lynn, but it also deepened their appreciation and compassion for who Lynn is and how she has survived throughout her life.

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