Dissociative Identity Disorder

In the last paper we learned about a father, David, with dissociative identity disorder. His alter personality became active when he found out his wife was cheating on him and lead to him killing of his wife, cat, another women and almost his own daughter. The whole time is daughter knew who he was and was afraid of his alter personality, Charlie, but she loved her father very much. David was never aware of this thinking his daughter just had an imaginary friend. At the end of the movie Charlie had totally taken over David and was killed however this paper will touch base on the possible treatment plan David would have received if he would have stayed alive.

Therapeutic Summary

A person with dissociative identity disorder has been exposed to a traumatizing event. People with this mental illness demonstrate two different personalities, these personalities have its own way of thinking about, perceiving, relating to and interacting with the environment and self, they assume control of the person’s behavior, one at a time and repeatedly. They are distinguished by different temperaments, likes, dislikes, manners of expression, posture and body language. Dissociative identity disorder makes a person have extended periods of forgetfulness longer than normal forgetfulness.

The goals of treatment for dissociative identity disorder are to relieve symptoms, to ensure the safety of the individual, and to "reconnect" the different identities into one well-functioning identity. Treatment also aims to help the person safely express and process painful memories, develop new coping and life skills, restore functioning, and improve relationships (Cleveland Clinic, 2013). There are six treatment plans that are commonly used to help reach theses goa...

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...r, however later I think it would be a good idea, this might be a policies that would have be worked on for this case. While it is appropriate at the being of his treatment because his case is so severe it might not be appropriate at the end of his treatment but that might be hard to prove to the mental health center board to allow David family access. Also not all mental health centers offer art therapy, some just give medicine and do psychotherapy that again would be appropriate for David later in his treatment but not at the beginning. So I would have to advocate to get art therapy at the mental health institute.

Works Cited

Cleveland Clinic. (2013). Dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder. Retrieved from: http://my.clevelandclinic.org/disorders/dissociative_disorders/hic_dissociative_identity_disorder_multiple_personality_disorder.aspx