• Self-mutilation or self-injuring behavior
• Hears voices
• Flashbacks (visual, auditory, somatic, affective, or behavioral)
• History of unsuccessful therapy
• Multiple past diagnoses (e.g.: major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, substance abuse)
• Reports of odd changes or variations in physical skills or interests
• Described by significant other as having 2 personalities or being a "Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde"
• Family history of dissociation
• Phobia or panic attacks
• Substance abuse
• Daytime enuresis or encopresis
• History of psycho-physiological symptoms
• Seizure-like episodes
• History of nightmare and sleep disorders
• History of sleepwalking
• School problems
• Reports psychic experiences
• Anorexia or Bulimia
• Sexual difficulties
• History of shifting symptom picture (one day symptoms of this...next day symptoms of that)

Two positive items from among 1-15 mandates consideration of a diagnosis of a dissociative disorder (e.g.: Dissociative Disorder NOS=not otherwise specified or possible Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).

Four or more positive items (especially among 1-15) mandates serious consideration of a diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder.

For many observers, MPD is a fascinating, exotic, and weird phenomenon. For the patient, it is confusing, unpleasant, sometimes terrifying, and always a source of the unexpected. The treatment of MPD is excruciatingly uncomfortable for the patient. The dissociated trauma and memory must be faced, experienced, metabolized, and integrated into the patient's view of him/herself. Similarly, the nature of one's parents, one's life, and the day-to-day world must be re-thought. As each alter metabolizes his/her trauma, then that alter can yield it's separateness and re-integrate (because that alter is no longer needed to contain undigested trauma).

Recovery from MPD and childhood trauma takes something on the order of five years. It is a long and arduous process of mourning. The important thing to remember is that recovery does and can happen.

Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder IS TREATABLE.

next: MPD/DID Key Findings Quick Facts