mental health disorders
Dissociative Identity Disorder
Treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder
Supportive care, including medications as needed for associated symptoms Psychotherapy Sometimes guided imagery and hypnosis The goal of treatment for dissociative identity disorder is usually to integrate the personalities into a single personality. However, integration is not always possible. In these situations, the goal is to achieve a harmonious interaction among the personalities that allows more normal functioning. Medications can relieve some specific coexisting symptoms, such as Overview of Anxiety Disorders or Psychotherapy is the main treatment used to integrate the different identities. Psychotherapy is often long, arduous, and emotionally painful. People may experience many emotional crises from the actions of the identities and from the despair that may occur when traumatic memories are recalled during therapy. Several periods of psychiatric hospitalization may be necessary to help people through difficult times and to come to grips with particularly painful memories. During hospitalization, people are continuously given support and monitored. Key components of effective psychotherapy for dissociative identity disorder include the following: Providing a way to stabilize intense emotions Negotiating relationships between identity states Working through traumatic memories Protecting against further victimization Establishing and enhancing a good relationship between the person and the therapist Sometimes psychotherapists use techniques such as Hypnotherapy to help such people calm themselves, alter their perspective on the events, and gradually desensitize the effects of traumatic memories, which are sometimes tolerated only in small amounts. Hypnosis can sometimes help people learn to access their identities, to facilitate communication between them, and to control the shifts between them. 