Personality Vs. Dissociative Disorders

*note, most links in this entry will take you to resources outside of this blog, they should not contain advertising as they are professional/government mental health resources*

Here's what we're irritated about today...well...concerned, really. Okay mostly I am today because I'm being irritated by some of our others about it lately, and writing about stuff, for most of us, releases the obsessions about the world and people that we routinely have. Also, helps us learn about each other.

Anywhositz.

What's up then?

We have been noticing lately that people are thinking it's a fun thing to do to pretend they have DID/MPD...when in fact they have other mental health disorders, and they write about it having DID/MPD, and use misleading information and resources - like Wikipedia...not a reliable source since it's editable by anyone.

This entry today is about the differences between Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder (what we have) and a personality disorder called Borderline Personality Disorder.

First off, to clear up misunderstandings, Dissociative Identity Disorder IS Multiple Personality Disorder, it's been renamed such under the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), in the 4th Edition, in 2000, by the American Psychiatric Association. 

Another mental health issue we will be discussing in more detail in the near future is Borderline Personality Disorder, a personality disorder which is a metal illness we do not have, along with many other types of personality disorders.

There are several differences between DID/MPD and BPD, one is that DID/MPD is a dissociative disorder, not a personality (despite its name) or mood disorder. For further differences we'll simply provide you with sources from the American Psychiatric Association and National Alliance on Mental Health.
- Classifications of Personality Disorders http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=469 VS.
- Classification of Dissociative Disorders http://www.dsm5.org/proposedrevision/Pages/DissociativeDisorders.aspx OR http://www.nami.org/Content/ContentGroups/Helpline1/Dissociative_Disorders.htm

We also direct you to an off-site abstract (with your option to delve into further research on your own, of course) entitled: 'Rethinking the comparison of borderline personality disorder and multiple personality disorder' (1994): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7877901)

Some description of BPD and DID/MPD - though we have several entries on our blog written about DID/MPD already, including 'The "D" In Dissociation' [internal link]) - to better clarify:

• Borderline Personality Disorder:- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001931/ - http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=By_Illness&Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm&TPLID=54&ContentID=44780

• Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder:
  - http://allpsych.com/journal/did.html - http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=Helpline&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=20562, 

So, why are we bringing this up at all?

It sounds bitchy on our part, I'll be honest.

We do not want to be aligned with people who have this disorder - as we are sure others with DID/MPD do not, just like we don't want our disorder to be aligned with Schizophrenia...each illness comes with it's own set of stigma, why add more because people are confused?

We have very legitimate reasons for wanting to make sure there is a clear understanding of the differences; it makes us uncomfortable. We've also been in discussion with a mental health professional regarding our discomfort surrounding BPD, and our desire to learn more so that perhaps we can overcome this edgy feeling we have in dealing with them. The professional we talked to encouraged us to trust our gut instinct about our dealings with people who suffer from this disorder, this is the second time they have told us such a thing, so now we can feel confident we were not being paranoid for no reason.

So why write about it?

First off, this blog, while for our own therapeutic benefits, is also for helping people understand mental illness, and not just ours. It is also to promote alternative therapies that can lead to a satisfying life without medications. (We no longer take medication as of a year and a half ago, however for the 10 years prior we were on Welbutrin, an anti-depressant...and years prior to that a plethora of anti-psychotics that never worked.)

Second, being who we are we tends to attract many people with mental illnesses of all sorts on Twitter, probably because some of us are way more tolerant of people and their behaviors and are too trusting, as opposed to others of us - a challenge in our decision to make our Twitter account shared among us. From recent experiences we have come to find, (and this is ONLY our personal opinion, though some texts will tell you the same thing), that people with BPD tend to be on the manipulative side, and we, on occasion, are easily manipulated; luckily not all of us. Some of us trust nobody.

In any case, recently we have been attracting a noticeable number of people who claim to have both Dissociative Identity Disorder and Multiple Personality Disorder...and that is our first clue that they may be misleading people. It's the same disorder, so there's no "and"...

A recent personal experience happens to be with a woman on Twitter who attached herself to us early on the beginning of last year, she used to send us e-mails that disturbed some of us, we even shared with Fabulous People (very close friends) the things she was saying to us, and expressing our uneasiness, and she too found them odd. At one point she stated that she was afraid to read our blog because she might steal, or mimic, our writing. She claimed to have a diagnosis of BPD, but then suddenly she had DID/MPD. Soon after we backed down much of our communication with her, some of us disliked her because she gave us an "off" feeling...but then she started doing very similar things to us, both in her blog, and in the "operation" of her Twitter account.

Call us paranoid, one of us usually is...and when she is, she's usually right. Not paranoia then, is it. (Our) She is far more perceptive than the rest of us. And now we know from our communication with a mental health professional that the feeling is not unfounded. 

Also, from what we can gather it may not be possible to have both BPD AND DID/MPD - though dissociation itself can occur in BPD as a symptom, the BPD itself is not DID - a diagnosis of both is unlikely without one being a misdiagnosis [amendment: there are occasions where one of the alters/personalities is diagnosed with BPD, but none of the others are. However, diagnosing individual personalities is rare, and difficult]. For more on what dissociation is, and the levels of dissociation, see our entry on the subject, as mentioned above http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/08/d-in-did-dissociation.html .

There are no medications that can be prescription for the symptoms of Dissociative Identity Disorders, though on occasion anti-depressant are prescribed for symptoms associated with them; not all people with DID have the associated symptoms of anxiety or depression to such an extent to require medication.

Our blog is about awareness and learning, (as well as all the other purposes we have outlined throughout the blog, such as writing therapy) so the majority (though not always) of the time the resources we provide are from mental health agencies, organizations and professional mental health resources (The American Psychiatric Assocaition, The United States National Library of Medicine, All Psych: A Virtual Psychology Classroom and The National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI) - we tend to discount most other resources, primarily because the internet is so full of misinformation, you can't throw a goat without hitting something that's full of nonsense, lies, and/or bias.

Frank is working on bringing a second mental health professional to our blog as a guest writer, to join our first and "long standing" mental health nurse, writer, and UK friend, Kerry Stott (her recent entry about Personal Problem Solving: http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/12/our-guest-blogger-writes-about-personal.html). We hope she will be well received by our readers as Kerry is.

That's it for now, we just needed to purge our worry and provide clarification. I'll be doing another blog post, with any luck,  today...about bread...because I'm making bread, and caramel rolls right now! Would you believe, James (The Boyfriend) says he's never had caramel rolls?!

~Cassandra