How do you guys feel about DID being a valid diagnosis? If it is removed from the DSM, what would cases be potentially reclassified as?
I think it's real. But it manifests entirely differently (obviously) than what people on youtube and such portray it as. from all the research articles, studies, etc., I've read, researchers agree that it's not multiple personalities in one body (hence part why MPD isn't used anymore), but a single personality that didn't fully come together due to repeated trauma, inattentive/unreliable/so on caregivers, and such. Especially in people who have other neurodevelopmental problems (e.g., ADHD or autism), because they don't process the world the same way as the average person, from studies and anecdotal evidence, I personally think it makes them more likely to form
a dissociative disorder, whether that's PTSD, C-PTSD, DID, OSDD, etc., and also because people just tend to treat people like that like shit anyway (because, you know, screaming at your autist child is okay but screaming at your normal child is child abuse).
With all the lack of mental healthcare in America -- which is where I noticed a lot of these "systems" come from -- and elsewhere, people rely on self-help and latch onto anything that vaguely fits the description of their symptoms, as well seem to forget that sometimes there is no one-size-fits-all answer for their symptoms (i.e., just look at all the addendums to major depressive disorder) and neglect to acknowledge that sometimes the "nastier" answers might just be it (e.g., NPD, HPD, schizophrenia, schizoaffective, BPD, etc.).
It's DEFINITELY not NEARLY as common as these youtubers are touting. I think they're mixing up that 1-3% statistic with the fact that 1-3% of people have
a dissociative disorder (which likely isn't accurate anyway). PTSD/C-PTSD by itself or mixed with BPD or another personality disorder can do some wack things to the brain. An unstable sense of identity can be a bitch to figure out and deal with. With that, if it were removed from the DSM, I think it would be reclassified as a subclass to BPD, since BPD is SO comorbid with DID as it is, or a subclass to C-PTSD, or a mix of both.
This study
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4579511/ is a really cool read, and the linked/referenced articles on the bottom. For any studies that are hidden behind paywall, check out sci-hub to break past those paywalls.
: “It was not long ago that psychiatric disorders were grossly classified as ‘organic’ and ‘functional’ according to whether there was a known brain structural alteration (e.g., dementia) or not (e.g., depression or schizophrenia). This merely reflected our inability to go beyond what could be visible to the naked eye in the brain. Functional brain studies ... have given us a powerful microscope to dissect the intimate molecular aspects of brain function.”
