DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER 1

Dissociative Identity Disorder

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Dissociative identity disorder is a mental condition characterized by individuals

depicting two or more personality identities. Such people suffering from dissociative identity

disorder portray different personality traits corresponding to a given identity. Dissociative

identity disorder helps people escape from bad memories by the way they react to trauma.

Dissociative identity disorder is among the dissociative disorders. Other dissociative

disorders include; dissociative amnesia, dissociative fugue and depersonalization disorder.

Dissociative identity disorder helps people to disconnect from the real world of what they are

facing by switching their identity. Dissociative personality disorder is characterized by

memory loss of certain people or events, a feeling of unbinding from yourself and your

feelings and fuzzed identity. Dissociative identity disorders mostly occurs in children when

they have been subjected to long physical abuse such sexual harassment at an early age,

physical bullying from peers or the elderly in the society or harsh upbringing by the family

members.

The first case of dissociative personality disorder to be put into record was in the year

1584. The case occurred to Jeanne Ferry and she recorded it in her exorcism. Jeanne Ferry

portrayed symptoms directly related to people suffering from the dissociative personality

disorder. The alters in the identity of Jeanne Ferry could be attributed to the early physical

conditions that she might have undergone. Such conditions include child physical abuse and

possibly sexual abuse (Dimitrova ., 2020). Another case of dissociative identity disorder to be

recorded was of Sister Benedetta who was beaten by angelic boys to inflict severe pain after

which they would speak in different language and tone and also different facial expression.

Sister Benedetta suffered from memory loss because of some of the actions which included

sexual abuse. Sister Benedetta disordered from eating. In the modern society, cases of

dissociative identity disorder are rare. Over time, the cases of people portraying more than

one identity have increased. Diagnosis of this disorder show that there is an average of two
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people out four during the initial stage. At average, a person portrays 13 to 15 multiple

personality disorder during treatment.

The significance of dissociative personality disorder to health issues is how the

disorder affects the whole-being of an individual. Dissociative identity disorder leads to a

state of mood swings among the affected people. In addition, it leads to eating disorder, sleep

problems such as nightmares and walking while asleep. It can also lead to severe headaches

sexual addiction or avoidance.

The role of the nurse as far as dissociative personality disorder id concerned to help curb

down the cases of such disorder in the society. This will be done by offering therapy lessons

to patients suffering from the disorder. In addition, nurses can offer guidance and counselling

the individuals suffering from such a disorder (Reinders,. 2019).

Dissociative identity disorder is relevant to the nursing practice from the onset of

identifying, prescribing and treating the condition. It is relevant to the practice of the nurse

since they are to offer the psychiatric evaluation (Brand ., et al 2019). Psychiatric evaluation

is done by administering of questionnaire with specific questions, administration of journals

and long interviews.

It is clear that dissociative identity disorder is a prevailing condition in our society. As

a society we have been mandated with the task of bringing up our children. We should

therefore provide a well enabling environment for the well raising of our children. For

individuals with the disorder, we should not neglect them but rather accept them and help

them seek medical assistance to help deal with such issue. We should also be our brother’s

keeper by ensuring that cases of physical child abuse are reported.

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References

Brand, B. L., Webermann, A. R., Snyder, B. L., & Kaliush, P. R. (2019). Detecting clinical

and simulated dissociative identity disorder with the Test of Memory

Malingering. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 11(5),

513.

Dimitrova, L., Fernando, V., Vissia, E. M., Nijenhuis, E. R., Draijer, N., & Reinders, A. A.

(2020). Sleep, trauma, fantasy and cognition in dissociative identity disorder, post-

traumatic stress disorder and healthy controls: a replication and extension

study. European journal of psychotraumatology, 11(1), 1705599.

Reinders, A. A., Marquand, A. F., Schlumpf, Y. R., Chalavi, S., Vissia, E. M., Nijenhuis, E.

R., ... & Veltman, D. J. (2019). Aiding the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder:

pattern recognition study of brain biomarkers. The British Journal of

Psychiatry, 215(3), 536-544.