What Is Dissociative Identity Disorder?
7. Professional Disagreements
Some mental health professionals have been outspokenly skeptical that childhood trauma causes DID. They instead believe it to be a by product of efforts to recover repressed memories that instead plant false ones. In some cases, they think the false memories were suggested by media dramatization of multiple personalities, a popular topic on American television in the 1980s. As evidence, they point to a declining rate of the disorder in the 1990s, and successful treatments that involved debunking false memories and reuniting with falsely accused family members.
Most psychiatrists do not doubt the veracity of dissociative identity disorder, and some cite historical records as evidence to support its legitimacy. For example, dissociative symptoms have historically been reported in survivors of every war beginning with World War I. Likewise, survivors of the Holocaust, torture survivors, and refugees have also exhibited symptoms of derealization and amnesia. Furthermore, a review of over 1,500 individual studies presented conclusive evidence that DID was brought on by actual childhood trauma.
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