How to Recognize Multiple Personality Disorder

According to statistics from WebMD, one out of every three people feels like watching themselves in movies at times. While this is may be a symptom of multiple personality disorder, statistics from WebMD reveal that only 0.01 to 1 percent of the population suffers from dissociative identity disorder (DID), commonly referred to as multiple personality disorder. This mental disorder often remains undiagnosed in many cases. Recognizing the symptoms of this disease should be the first step towards the diagnosis as well as its successful treatment. In this article, we will take a look at the different symptoms of multiple personality disorder.

Symptoms of Multiple Personality Disorder

Psychological, physical or/and sexual trauma are some of the main causes of dissociative identity disorder (DID). Following are some of the most common symptoms of the disorder.

• Depressive mood – A patient with multiple personality disorder is likely to have a depressive mood. He or she may also have a tendency to commit suicide. Patients with DID are often quite confused about taking decisions in life.
• Loss of memory – Patients with a medical history of amnesia are often prone to suffer from dissociative identity disorder. In most cases, victims of DID find it difficult to remember simple things like when or where they met a person in the recent past and so on. In severe conditions, the patients may forget what they bought last week or what they had for dinner last night. Memory loss is considered as one of the major symptoms of multiple personality disorder.
• Hallucination – A person with multiple personality disorder may also experience visual or auditory illusions, know as hallucinations. The patient may often talk loudly to himself in case of auditory hallucinations or behave strangely while having a visual hallucination of different personalities.
• Problem in recognizing himself – Another very common symptom of DID patients is that they often can’t recognize themselves. This feeling usually comes when they look at themselves in the mirror. Different alters of the patient may also make him feel that he is not truly living in the present.
• Lying – The influence of multiple personalities might make the patient say or do contradictory things. Patients with this disorder, often forget what they said or did to a person even a few days ago. All these may make him seem like a liar. However, he is not lying in the true sense. It is because he is influenced by different alters that his actions and statements may seem contradictory.

A patient with multiple personality disorder may also experience rapid change of thoughts and moods. If you identify these symptoms in yourself or your close ones, you should seek medical help for proper diagnosis immediately.