Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is
characterised by many signs and symptoms.
People with DID may experience any of the
following: depression, mood swings, suicidal thoughts or attempts, sleep
disorders (insomnia, night terrors, and sleep-walking), panic attacks and
phobias (flashbacks, reactions to reminders of the trauma), alcohol and drug
abuse, compulsions and rituals, psychotic-like symptoms, and eating disorders.
Individuals may also experience headaches, amnesia, time loss, trances, and
'out-of-body experiences'. Some people with DID have a tendency toward
self-persecution, self-sabotage, and even violence (both self-inflicted and
outwardly directed) (Sidran Institute, 2009).
Similar to hallucinations, they often hear
different voices in their heads. Some hear child voices, others hear
persecutory voices or voices that comments on their actions or voices. These
voices are usually arguing or conversing (Galton & Sachs, 2008). Some
of them might also have somatoform symptoms where their physical symptoms has
no physical causes and are caused by mental factors such as stress (Medline
Plus, 2010). They also experience a disturbed state of consciousness,
known as fugues, in which the one affected seems to perform acts in full
awareness but upon recovery cannot recollect them (Merriam-Webster, 2012).
Lasly, some people with DID may experience
derealisation, otherwise described as a feeling of altered reality. In
derealisation, one might feel as though they are in a dream or in a different dimension
and that things that are happening are not real (Berman, 2009). They might also
experience depersonalisation, an alteration in the perception of the self, such
that the usual sense of one's own reality is lost. In depersonalisation, people
with DID may feel estranged from themselves, experience changes in their body
image or feel that they are not in control of their own actions and speech
(Petit, 2003).
References
Berman, C. W. (2009). 100
questions & answers about panic disorder. USA: Jones &
Bartlett Learning.
Galton, G. & Sachs, A.
(2008). Forensic aspects of dissociative identity disorder. Britain:
Karnac Books.
Medline Plus. (2010). Somatoform
pain disorder. Retrieved from
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000922.htm
Merriam-Webster. (2012). Fugue. Retrieved
from http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/fugue
Petit, J. R. (2003). Handbook
of emergency psychiatry. USA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Sidran Institute.
(2009). What is a dissociative disorder? Retrieved from
http://www.sidran.org/sub.cfm?contentID=75§ionid=4
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