Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Literature Review

Abstract

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is a disorder that has a big burden in the everyday life of the patient, and it’s not well-known because of the often-wrong idea portrayed by the media. To better understand this disorder, in this review we looked at four important questions. First, we looked at the prevalence of DID to have an idea of how many people have it, and we found it is not as rare as it is believed. Second, we looked at how it develops and we found three possibilities: Trauma Model, Fantasy Model, and a severe symptom of Borderline Personality Disorder. Third, we looked at the existent treatments and found that the trauma-focused psychotherapy is the preferred way of treatment, but we also found that quetiapine helps, as well as the use of relational psychoanalytic treatment. Lastly, we concluded that there is not a lot of research done in any area of DID and that is where we should focus on doing more research so we can know more about a forgotten disorder that affects the lives of so many people.