Treating A Dissociative Disorder

It's often the case in the psychiatric world that people are mistakenly diagnosed with other disorders, when if fact they suffer from a dissociative disorder, either dissociative identity disorder (DID), depersonalization disorder, dissociative amnesia or dissociative fugue. Indeed, that diagnosis itself has been in and out of favor as a psychiatric diagnosis over the years, but the evidence now seems to suggest pretty strongly that it's very real. Part of the reason why there has been some hesitation in acknowledging that these are real disorders is because the symptoms are also associated with other problems, such as depression, post traumatic stress syndrome, and eating disorders. Treatments for those problems don't improve dissociative disorders.

People may think of an illness involving multiple personalities when they hear about a "dissociative" disorder, but the term actually covers the four different disorders, which again are dissociative amnesia, fugue (where the person wanders away to start a new life with no memory of the past), dissociative identity disorder (or DID, the one involving multiple personalities), and depersonalization. These are not anxiety disorders, though it's true that amnesia and fugue frequently result from some kind of trauma, and DID usually develops from ongoing childhood trauma that prevents the child from integrating their personality normally while growing up.

Current treatments for a dissociative disorder pretty much always have psychotherapy as one of the elements, though hypnosis is frequently a key method for helping the amnesia patients restore the memories of a traumatic event or remember their real identity. Certain drugs, such as the medication called Pentothal (or thiopental) can also help restore memories that have been blocked out. For DID, the primary treatment is long-term psychotherapy to explore the past traumas and resolve them so the different personalities merge into one. Sometimes if the person's behaviour becomes too aggressive or strange, medical treatments in a hospital are used in conjunction with the psychological treatments. Depersonalization, too, is resolved with psychotherapy.

It may take considerable work, not to mention time, to see results in treating a dissociative disorder. Treating dissociative fugue can sometimes bring quick recovery, but resolving traumatic amnesia or depersonalization can take longer. And even with the best treatments, dissociative identity disorder has been known to recur sometimes, though the likelihood becomes less as the person ages. Looking at these success rates, people might become discouraged about getting treatment. Yet these disorders show so many symptoms of other problems like depression, or eating or anxiety disorders, that the underlying illness does need to be treated if the person is to have any chance at recovery.

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