PETALING JAYA: Almost 650,000 Malaysians or 2% of the population has been diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), which was previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder or split personality.
The formation of multiple identities occurs often in response to extreme abuse in childhood. Individuals who developed different identities have described the experience as a way for them to shut off the abuse.
The Mind Faculty psychiatrist and psychotherapist Dr Stephen Jambunathan said DID means a person changes his personality to become someone else so that he does not have to suffer pain.
“This is mainly due to traumatic events. This includes past and current emotional experiences that the individual could not deal with. An unstable and traumatic childhood, inconsistent upbringing or severe trauma, could also be reasons for someone having this disorder. It is not a conscious behaviour as the individual subconsciously becomes someone else.
“DID is usually triggered by emotional, sexual, and internal abuse. Under these stressful conditions, a sufferer creates another personality or ‘alters’ his original personality to cope with the feelings,” Jambunathan told theSun.
He said under certain circumstances, a DID sufferer might change his voice and speak in a different language, act and dress differently, change his body structure and even take on different names.
“However, a person can only speak languages that he knows. After the stress and anxiety are over, he might not remember what happened, such as why he was dressed differently,” Jambunathan said.
He noted that many people have mistaken schizophrenia as split personality or DID.
“Schizophrenia means splitting the function of the mind and not splitting the personality. Because the mental disorder is quite complex, a psychologist may misdiagnose the illness.”
He said the patient needs to undergo psychotherapy to ascertain the cause.
There is no medication for this disorder. The main treatment is psychotherapy sessions.
If the patient has secondary mental illnesses, such as depression and anxiety, the psychiatrist will suggest medications.
He said treatment for DID can take a month or more than 10 years.
However, practitioners often overlooked DID cases due to lack of knowledge of the whole dissociative disorder spectrum, which resembled that of a psychotic disorder, he said.
Clinical psychologist Dr Joel Low said there is little research about mental health in Malaysia.
Hence extensive research is required.
“While we would typically adopt our western counterpart’s research and findings for our use, it may not be very suitable.
“No one wants to have depression or anxiety or DID. However, when you have it, the stigmatisation is there,” he said.
