Psycho-Babble Medication Thread 4871

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Mistaken MPD diagnosis

Posted by Toby on April 14, 1999, at 13:09:55

Has anyone been mistakenly diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder or Dissociative Identity Disorder? How was the diagnosis made? What kinds of treatments did you get? How long did it take before you found out it was not correct? How did you find out it was a mistake and how did you deal with it afterwards?

 

Re: Mistaken MPD diagnosis

Posted by Craig on April 15, 1999, at 4:39:35

In reply to Mistaken MPD diagnosis, posted by Toby on April 14, 1999, at 13:09:55

If your interest in this is more than casual, I would be able to locate a number of patients hospitalized for MPD/DID by Bennett Braun in Chicago. Perhaps I should amend this to FORMER patients, since most now believe they were misdiagnosed.

For an in-depth article that addresses the very questions you've asked, I suggest the June 1998 online edition of Chicago Magazine at http://www.chicagomag.com/chicagomag/text/table.htm and read the article titled Dangerous Therapy by Cynthia Hanson beginning at http://www.chicagomag.com/chicagomag/text/features/therapy/0698a.htm

As I discussed in the Anxiety vs Dissociation thread here earlier this month, I know the woman featured in the Chicago Magazine article. To summarize her case, hypnotherapy combined with extensive drug therapy can lead to tragic results.

 

Re: Mistaken MPD diagnosis

Posted by us on April 15, 1999, at 17:26:22

In reply to Mistaken MPD diagnosis, posted by Toby on April 14, 1999, at 13:09:55

> Has anyone been mistakenly diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder or Dissociative Identity Disorder?

TOBY--but how would the patient know?
I've often wondered if I don't "fulfill" a Dx--
although it took several years before Dx:MPD;
before that, it was PTSD and Depression. Now, I think it is all three. I know that I can dissociate BIG time. If I get scared,I'm gone.--US

 

Re: MPD/DID----TOBY

Posted by us on April 26, 1999, at 20:21:10

In reply to Re: Mistaken MPD diagnosis, posted by us on April 15, 1999, at 17:26:22

TOBY--left previous msg awhile ago-thought that you may have missed it . Saw your posting on populartiy of Bipolar Dx. So how does the patient know the difference between bipolar and DID? I think I "hide" my DID and disassociation well but I often wonder if the diagnosis is accurate. I know I can disassociate BIG time in a therapy session, it's more defined. But has therapy caused it (I doubt it ) or does it just come out in therapy? If I read about MPD, I start to disassociate -- us

 

Re: MPD/DID

Posted by Toby on April 27, 1999, at 8:06:36

In reply to Re: MPD/DID----TOBY, posted by us on April 26, 1999, at 20:21:10

I posted here yesterday, but it seems to have been lost. I will repeat myself and if the other post shows up, I apologize for the repetition.

Dissociation is a natural phenomenon that nearly everyone can do. The average person experiences dissociation while driving down the road on long or very familiar trips: they can operate the car and respond to environmental stimuli while being completely unaware of doing so because they are deep in thought about something else. Other instances would be things like zoning out during boring conversations or lectures, having an old memory triggered and "going there" but still doing whatever you were doing before. During traumatic events many people dissociate from the sounds, pain, etc while others do not. Children who grow up in violent or otherwise abusive households dissociate more because it becomes a "learned" phenomenon; there's more opportunity and necessity to do so and kids use what they know works. Once a child learns to dissociate on a regular basis, it is a hard habit to break. If, in childhood, the person names different parts or emotions that they have (much like non-dissociative children name imaginary playmates), and then never "grows out of it," i.e., gets into a safe environment and stops needing to dissociate, then you have the makings of DID. Trouble arises for the adult who is able to dissociate and does so frequently, when a therapist begins asking them to name emotions or states of being and treating them as separate people, even though the patient him/herself has never done so before. All the problems and traumas of the past and the current problem of too much dissociation could be treated independently, but adding in problems that didin't exist before just complicates the picture and makes it difficult for the patient to resolve anything, because now they have to worry about treating every part of themselves as a separate entity and make sure everybody agrees with everything being done. I have never seen a dissociative person get better through addressing every emotion as a person (but that's just me), but I have seen many many dissociative people get way better through addressing the traumas that they remember (not creating memories for the times that they don't remember, because after all, the dissociation goes way back and they probably don't have memories for the times they were "zoned out" just like average people don't have memories for the trips they take during "road hypnosis") and through various techniques (and sometimes medications) to decrease the amount of time spent dissociating.

To the specific question of telling the difference between bipolar disorder and DID: of course, the two disorders could occur together, but the differences are that dissociation occurs sporadically, from minutes to hours and I suppose up to days (like in a fugue state) whereas mania and depression occur from days to months at a time and have more to do with one's mood state than specific emotions that come and go. Dissociation is not a "mood" but a state where one becomes unaware of what's happening in the environment but is aware of what's happening in the mind (most of the time a person should be able to recall what they were thinking about unless they were startled out of their reverie and immediately distracted by what's in the environment).

Some people will swear and declare that DID doesn't exist or is created by evil therapists while others swear and declare that DID is completely real and always should be believed when a therapist has made the diagnosis. What both of these extremes forget is that the "alters" or different "personalities" are not "real people," i.e., there aren't 2-20 "people" living inside one body. Those who "believe" in DID end up treating each emotion or ego state as a "real person" and catering to it as a "real person" (essentially adding fuel to unwanted behaviors) while those who don't "believe" end up ignoring the patient's ability to dissociate and thereby ignore the emotions and ego states that need to be addressed because the patient has indeed cut them off from consciousness due to past abuses.

I'm sure I've unintentionally said some inflammatory things here; but I'm open to further discussion.

 

Re: MPD/DID - Toby

Posted by Craig on April 28, 1999, at 4:45:45

In reply to Re: MPD/DID, posted by Toby on April 27, 1999, at 8:06:36

I like your common sense approach to this, but I would like to clarify a point. Some readers might misunderstand and think that DID simply involves assigning a person's name to an emotion to create an alter, i.e. "If I'm happy, I must be Jimmy." Alters have a range of emotions, but perhaps are focused in a more specific state of mind which distinguishes them from other alters. What I mean is that just because you're basically a happy person doesn't mean that you never get sad.

In the Anxiety vs Dissociation thread, I just posted a longer message about bipolar disorder occurring together with dissociation, so I won't repeat it here.

 

Re: MPD/DID - Toby

Posted by us on April 28, 1999, at 8:02:28

In reply to Re: MPD/DID - Toby, posted by Craig on April 28, 1999, at 4:45:45

TOBY -
thank you for yor response; I will spend time
thinking about it; but I made it through reading it without dissappearing - thanks - us

 

Re: MPD/DID - Toby

Posted by Elaine on April 29, 1999, at 22:01:35

In reply to Re: MPD/DID - Toby, posted by us on April 28, 1999, at 8:02:28

I agree that most everyone can dissociate to some degree. Would you say that DID in the MPD sense is simply farther down the road, maybe even at the end of it? Now, there are obviously not 2-20 physical people in a body, but I guess I believe that alters in a true DID (MPD) case are a tad more than "moods", that there are very different personality characteristics, even good or evil. And working out the trauma is always the way to healing, but a lot of the trauma has to be accessed through these alters, which is not so easy to do. My real question here is: have you read any research regarding changes in eyesight, ability to tolerate medication, etc. between alters? That would seem to be more than simple mood alterations, wouldn't it?

P.S. May I presume you do not believe in multiple personality disorder, only types of dissociation without the actual development of "personalities"?

 

Re: MPD/DID

Posted by Toby on May 12, 1999, at 8:00:40

In reply to Re: MPD/DID - Toby, posted by Elaine on April 29, 1999, at 22:01:35

Just as there are different physiological states that exist depending on the emotional state of a person, so could there be different physical states or symptoms depending on the emotional "assignment" of alters. Again, noting the fact that these are not different "people," the varying symptoms and abilities of the alters have an underlying psychological basis (i.e., what "meaning" does the psyche assign to the different symptoms, talents and/or disabilities of the alters?) and it is possible to explore these issues and access these hidden states without assigning names and personalities to them. The same is done with nondissociative patients. In some ways, it becomes easier with dissociative patients to do this if proper time and preparation is taken and a trusting relationship is formed before leaping into the painful matierial that led to the severe dissociation in the first place. Preparation is important, too, so that the matierial accessed can be tolerated and then remembered, worked through and accepted ("acceptance" meaning acknowldegement that it happened, is over and the person survived and can now make his/her own decisions and not experience it again; not "acceptance" as in feeling that he/she deserved it or it's not important that it happened and should therefore "just get over it").

As to the question of whether MPD exists: I believe it exists as a function of how far a patient and/or the therapist will allow the symptoms to go. It is the same as a schizophrenic person hearing voices: I don't believe there are really devils talking to the person, but the person is experiencing it as real and therefore it must be treated (in the case of schizophrenia the treatment is with medication); the person must be continually reminded of reality and not encouraged to separate further from reality by agreeing that devils are really there. In the case of schizophrenia the basis for the symptoms is mostly biological and only partially psychological whereas in MPD the basis is mostly psychological and only partially biological.


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