As described in the book Psychology and Your Life, “A person with dissociative identity disorder (DID) presents the characteristics of two or more personalities, identities or personality fragments”. Many people are fascinated by this strange psychological disorder, but question its reality. The media preyed on this DID captivation and made it mainstream with films such as Split and Me, Myself, & Irene. These films, while entertaining, do not show the full context and spectrum of this disorder. Dissociative identity disorder is a complex problem that is the subject of ongoing research to learn more about its many associated symptoms and trauma-related causes. Say no to plagiarism. Get Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original Essay Dissociative identity disorder, called multiple personality disorder until 1994, was first reported about 4 centuries ago. However, it was not until 1980 that it was accepted as a psychological disorder by the American Psychiatric Association. According to the American Journal of Psychotherapy, only 200 cases had been reported until now, but that number skyrocketed once the diagnostic criteria were added to the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). (Piper, 1994). The prevalence of DID is now estimated to be “approximately 1% among women in the general population and 6% among psychiatric outpatients.” No one can be sure that these numbers are accurate, however, because the diagnostic criteria are vague and can be interpreted differently. The entire dissociative identity disorder sector has grown in tandem with the number of patients diagnosed. National conferences, new research, and hospital marketing have been conducted to raise awareness of this obscure and growing disorder (Piper, 1994). At first, not much was known about this disorder, but the growth of the industry has helped experts and the public understand it better. As additional information was learned about DID over the years, its description became more detailed. With each new edition of the DSM, new facts about the disorder and a clearer method of diagnosis are released. The most recent DSM-5 adds to its previous descriptions of DID by stating that it is characterized by "a disturbance in identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states, with a marked discontinuity in the sense of self." . .accompanied by related alterations in affect, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition and/or sensorimotor functioning.” This much more complete description makes it easier to accurately diagnose people with this disorder. Not only has more information been discovered about the outward physical effects, but more is also known about each individual personality of the patient. The previously mentioned book Psychology and Your Life notes how each personality fully develops with its own opinions and reactions to situations. Personalities can also be very different in terms of gender, age, handwriting and values. The Journal of Genetic Psychology describes how patients with DID often suffer from amnesia due to the personalities not having full contact with each other (Murray, 1994). For the most part, each personality only has memories of what happened when they were the dominant personality at that time. This new information on theDissociative identity disorder has made it easier to diagnose people who suffer from it, but it is still very difficult to help them given the many characteristics associated with this disorder. DID is already an abnormality in itself, but then add the fact that most people who have it also have several other interconnected disorders. Clinicians unfamiliar with the disorder may misdiagnose patients as schizophrenic because many of the symptoms are the same (Murray, 1994). One of these similar symptoms between the two are depression and suicide attempts. A study discussed in the American Journal of Psychotherapy showed that outpatients with IDD were 15 times more likely to have a history of suicide attempts than any other psychosis, including alcohol abuse and PTSD. However, in DID, depression may only appear in certain personalities, with other personalities having no memory of suicide attempts. Suicide, however, is not the only problem associated with dissociative identity disorder. According to the medical journal Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, DID is actually considered a form of PTSD that developed at an early age. Both occurring after trauma, these disorders affect the brain in similar ways; the only exception being that DID patients dissociate from themselves to cope. DID is also linked to many other dissociative and personality disorders, the main one being borderline personality disorder. Again discussed in the American Journal of Psychotherapy, it was found that "any practitioner treating a patient population with BPD will, predictably, encounter a substantial minority of patients who also suffer from BPD." These numerous symptoms and disorders associated with DID make its treatment extremely difficult, especially when there is also a traumatic context in the patient. It is well known that the cause of dissociative identity disorder is childhood trauma, usually in the form of abuse. Often, abused children create different personas, such as imaginary friends, that they can develop into their personalities in order to escape the reality of their lives (Murray, 1994). Each personality created is part of the entire individual, but has its own related memories and traumas. An example of this is a sexually abused child who dissociates to create a personality that does not remember being abused, this way he can function properly sexually. However, not all abused children will have IDD and the trauma must occur at a specific developmental stage of the individual for this disorder to have a chance of developing. Traumatic experiences of abuse occurring early in the ego and identity formation phase will more likely cause the development of borderline personality disorder, while those occurring later will cause dissociative identity disorder (Murray , 1994). This is probably because young children are not able to understand what is happening, unlike older children who understand and want to forget. Although the cause of DID has been known to be trauma since it was first considered a psychological disorder, until recently it was never known how trauma affected the patient mentally. A study published in the journal Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica in 2018 was the first to compare the relationship between trauma and brain anatomy in DID patients. To do this, the researchers performed MRI scans of 32 DID women (including 29 suffering from stress syndromecomorbid post-traumatic stress due to childhood trauma) and 43 women without any psychological disorder. They used cutting-edge technology to measure each patient's cortical volume (CV), cortical thickness (CT), and surface area (SA); these three being brain structures with distinct developmental pathways that appear similar in healthy controls. After studying the results, it was found that "women with IDD had significant and widespread volumetric reductions in regional gray matter in the insula, cingulate cortex, dorsolateral, superior, medial, and orbitofrontal prefrontal cortex, as well as as the superior and inferior temporal lobe. ". The areas of the brain that appear different in women with IDD are the regions responsible for processing and regulating emotions. These results are important because they show that environmental factors, particularly early life trauma, significantly affect the neurological development of the brain. Trauma and abuse can place such stress on the brain's emotional regulators that they can physically derail its developmental path and make the onset of dissociative identity disorder more likely. This idea goes a long way toward better understanding the mental effects of DID, but it doesn't provide any insight into how to properly treat this complex problem. Since its discovery, many types of psychotherapy have been used to attempt to treat patients with IDD, to no avail. The rise of dissociative identity disorder after its diagnostic criteria were added to the DSM-III left psychologists scrambling to find a treatment for the disorder. However, not everything that was tried worked because there was no effective standard psychotherapy that took into account all the proponents of DID – from dealing with different personalities in each session to comorbidity. Many therapies tested on patients with this disorder were also unsuccessful because they caused stress in the patient, which would prompt them to change treatments and prevent them from gaining valuable information. Along with this, it has not helped that, until recently, it was believed that the proper “treatment” for dissociative identity disorder was to merge all identities into one. Obviously, this was very difficult and often the fusion would not be sustained if it occurred, because each identity is still part of the whole individual. This method was extremely time consuming and not at all cost effective. A study described in the American Journal of Psychotherapy shows that fusion therapy does not work as 123 patients participated in the treatment, but only 33 remained stably fused for 27 months, and most did not last much longer long as that. Fortunately, new treatment guidelines developed by the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation have helped eliminate fusion therapy (Foote & Van Orden, 2016). After numerous studies, they have discovered that a step-by-step approach to treating DID is most beneficial in treating all symptoms. Since it was suggested that staged treatment of DID works most effectively, many studies have been done to determine what specific type of psychotherapy should be used. Brad Foote, MD, and Kim Van Orden, Ph.D., argue in the American Journal of Psychotherapy that dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), commonly used to treat borderline personality disorder, is the best option (Foote & Van Orden, 2016). Since DID and the disorder.12839