It can be hard to know just what dissociative identity disorder (DID) is. DID is among those mental illnesses that are wildly misunderstood. Part of the reason is that the human brain is complex, DID is complex, and researchers are just now beginning to uncover answers. Here’s an infographic that highlights what, exactly, DID is.
What is DID? Increasing Understanding
Understanding is increasing so much that experts have even changed the name from multiple personality disorder to dissociative identity disorder. This is a much more accurate term. Someone with DID has one personality just like everyone else. In DID, someone has different identities within his or her psyche, each with his or her own single personality).
Yet many people still misunderstand DID, partially because many books and movies tell an entertaining story but care very little for accuracy. The movie Split (2017) is an example. It had some nice surprises in that parts of the movie portrayed DID accurately. Because the movie was a thriller, though, other aspects of it misrepresented DID (See my take on the movie in Split and Dissociative Identity Disorder: The Good, the Bad, and the Weird.)
With so much misunderstanding, it’s difficult to know what dissociative identity disorder really is. Here’s an infographic look at some basic facts about DID, drawn from the realistic novel Twenty-Four Shadows.
Stories, novels, can show just what DID is and what it’s like for people in the real world to live with.