Dissociative Identity Disorder: The horrifying things our brain can do

We've all had a phase where we talk to ourselves ( Some people still find comfort in it, including myself). However, we would have never imagined, even in our most wildest, horrifying nightmares that we have to 'share' our body with several other 'people'. Even if it sounds like an Indian horror movie, people with dissociative identity disorder experience this unbelievable  condition. 

Dissociative Identity Disorder, also known as Multiple Identity Disorder, is a disorder where a person alternates or 'changes' between two or more alternative personalities of their own consciousness, memory, identities and beliefs , usually used as a way to cope with untreated trauma so that the victim does not undergo bad memories.  The brain creates its own form of reality, where various alters are formed. These 'alters' are individual personalities with their own set of identities that differ in factors such as gender, age, etc.

Each of these alters are given a 'role' that protects the traumatized patient. Some of the roles observed in majority of DID patients are; 

The 'Gatekeepers' :  The alters which take up the responsibility of  being pre-cautious of people in the life of the the 'Host' ( The Patient).  They maintain an incredibly long distance between the patient and the people around them, which hinders their already absent social life.

The 'Child' :  Since DID is a mental disease that happens to people when they're traumatized at an young age, the child alters maintain the innocence of the victim/patient. 

The 'Protectors' :  The protectors are the alters that claim the main responsibility of  protecting the victim. they usually come forward and act as the host of the body when the victim tries to self harm or goes through an life or death situation. 

Like these 'roles', there are many other roles these alters play to protect the victim. While the brain of the body tries to protect itself by creating these alters, the victims don't have any control in their own body. When anything triggers their memory, these alters take over the body to protect itself again. During this, the 'host' of the body has absolutely no memory of how their alters are reacting or handling the situations. To sum it up, it's almost like a parasitic relationship, where the parasites try to protect the host while also 'sharing' the same body.

Pretty confusing, isn't it?

       

One of the first cases of DID was observed in the 1791s, where A German woman started speaking French and behaving as a French Aristocrat despite never having visited France. Of course, during that time, she was dismissed off as a case of 'pretending', and the case was never investigated further. 

It was first discovered by Dr. Jean Martin Charcot in the late 1880s. He was the chief physician at Salpetriere Hospital in Paris. He called this new disease Hystero-Epilepsy as the symptoms resembled two already discovered illnesses, Hysteria and Epilepsy. 

According to statistics, almost 0.5% to 2% of the population have this disorder and 7% of  the population may have it undiagnosed. Due to the huge stigma associated with this disorder, which is often fueled by movies and shows depicting the patients as 'murderers', such fatal mental diseases are often ignored as the potential problem by psychiatrists even after several displays of symptoms. This disease can be diagnosed, but it is not curable. 

Even though this is a rare mental disease, such horrifyingly interesting phenomenon never escape our curiosity. To know more about this, you can watch these videos, which explain this matter much more vividly : 1) https://youtu.be/ek7JK6pattE

2) https://youtu.be/Cqwc5dg12eQ

Thank you, have a curious day ahead :)