Current issues in dissociative identity disorder

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), remains among the most challenging of mental disorders. It is difficult to understand, to diagnose, to treat, to discuss objectively in the face of the many controversies that swirl around it. It remains a condition that requires intensive individual psychotherapy for its satisfactory resolution. The controversies that have surrounded DID have often obscured the progress that has been made. DID is emerging as a not uncommon consequence of overwhelming childhood events. The major challenges facing the treatment of DID are disentangling this condition and its therapy from the controversies that swirl about them, encouraging the more widespread use of specific diagnostic approaches, educating managed care organizations to accept standards of care for DID that are based upon those treatment approaches that are effective, making specific treatments for DID more available, and continuing to develop more successful approaches for the more difficult-to-treat DID subgroups of DID patients.

Magazine

English

Richard P. Kluft

Kluft, R. P. (2003). Current issues in dissociative identity disorder. Bridging Eastern and Western Psychiatry, 1(1), 71-87