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DID has been officially recognized as a mental disorder since its inclusion in the 1980 release of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III).
The diagnosis of DID continues to remain controversial among mental health professionals, even though understanding of the illness increases. There is no question that the symptoms are real and people do experience them.
When it comes to DID, movies and TV rarely provide an accurate portrayal. Symptoms are frequently sensationalised, exaggerated or just plain wrong.
Movies and TV shows that misrepresent DID spread inaccurate information about a real illness and stigmatise the people living with it. Stigma discourages people from seeking help and isolates them socially.
Research undertaken by the University of Melbourne found that ‘pervasive negative portrayals can have harmful effects, perpetuating the stigma associated with mental illness and reducing the likelihood that those with mental illness will seek help.’
Schizophrenia and DID are often confused with each other, but they’re very different things.
Schizophrenia is a psychotic illness: symptoms are delusions and hallucinations. This manifests in paranoid and unorganized thoughts. This is expressed in hearing sounds and voices and seeing things that are not there. People with schizophrenia experience these voices as coming from the outside, and are (usually) aware that it is not real. People with schizophrenia often have uncontrolled movements and withdraw from socially. They do not suffer from dissociation and have no alternative personalities.
People with DID do not have delusions and hallucinations. People with DID who have not yet been diagnosed, are sometimes thought to have aspects of schizophrenia. This is because for most people with DID the personalities can discuss and talk to each other. This can be explained as a psychosis and hearing voices, but with people with DID these voices clearly come from within. In people with schizophrenia, these clearly come from outside.
People with DID are no more likely to be violent than anyone else. There are very few documented cases linking crime to DID. The idea of an ‘evil’ alter is not true.
People with DID are more likely than the general population to be re-traumatized and experience further abuse and violence.
Because of the association with multiple or ‘split’ personalities, DID is often misunderstood to be a personality disorder, but they are actually two very different things.
Personality disorders are a constant fixed pattern of feeling and behaving over time, usually developing in early adulthood. Personality disorders, like borderline personality disorder, involve extreme emotional responses and patterns of behaviour which make it hard for the person with the disorder to have stable relationships and function in society.
DID is a dissociative disorder. Rather than extreme emotional reactions to the world, people living with DID lose contact with themselves: their memories, sense of identity, emotions and behaviour. Unlike personality disorders, DID may first manifest at almost any age.
In movies and TV shows, switches between alternate identities tend to be wildly exaggerated for dramatic effect. In reality, for the vast majority of people with DID, switching between alters can’t be identified by a casual observer at all.