Treatment assessment for dissociative identity disorder

Dissociative symptom is one way that clients display how they are coping with stress. Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is the most severe dissociative disorder. DID is characterized by dissociative amnesia, which cause the barrier for dissociation. Therefore, in the initial stages, we find that 1) clients are often unaware of their dissociative symptoms, 2) clients do not remember performing certain actions, 3) strange phenomena occur around the clients, and 4) client's behaviors are inconsistent with those observed by family members and others around them. Other primary complaints include memory loss of a certain period in the past, memory disorders in daily living, the loss of previously-held skills, realizing that one has moved to another place without knowledge, and feeling like a different person, to name a few. When meeting with the therapist, clients will often seem quite normal, but once the therapist connects with the personality states (parts), a variable and complicated system is found in the background. In such instances, because of the dissociative barrier, therapists must address these issues in a very flexible and accommodating manner. In addition, those treating the client must also avoid over-diagnosing the temporary ego state or malignant regression as multiple personality disorder. In this paper, I provide a simple explanation about assessment and treatment objectives from my experiences with treating clients with DID.

Journal

Japanese

Keisuke Niki

Niki, K. (2017, May). [Treatment assessment for dissociative identity disorder]. Japanese Journal of EMDR Research and Practice, 9(1), 13-22. Japanese