Dissociative Identity Disorder in popular media

[John Albert]

but this idea is not universally accepted

Of course it isn't!

 

[Nursedan]

Reminds me of the old Saturday Night Live sketch where a psychiatrist was helping a group of like six people with their "delusion" that they had more than one personality. He talked about how well they were doing, because when they started they had 15 personalities. "The others got fed up and quit coming!" he was told.

Funny. On another note, Nathan cites a court case years ago where a man had consensual sex with a woman, who then accused him of raping her when she had been another personality. She took him to court and was allowed to testify as several of her multiple personalities.

He was convicted.

As were parents of people with "retrieved memories" of being abused, usually in impossibly bizzare ways. It was a whole era of fads and backwards thinking.

 

[Roma]

Okay you just know that I'm going to say someting about Dr.Colin Ross here

taken from the FMSF newsletter: http://www.fmsfonline.org/currentnewsletter.pdf


MULTIPLE PERSONALITY TESTIMONY OF COLIN ROSS, M.D.,
EXCLUDED IN TEXAS TWILIGHT RAPIST CASE.

In September a jury of six men and six women in Edna, Texas took 10
minutes to convict 54-year-old Billy Joe Harris on charges related to
the sexual assault of an elderly disabled woman. They rejected his
claim that he had multiple personality disorder............

To support the claim of MPD, the defense called Dr. Colin Ross who
testified that he believed Harris suffered from multiple
personalities. Ross based that belief on a personal interview, 35
minutes of which were spent talking to one of Harris' four alters.
Ross also based that belief on three tests that another doctor had
administered, a very unusual procedure. Ross testified that because
dissociative identity disorder is in the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) that it is "real and valid disorder."

The District Attorney asked if Ross had made any attempt to determine
if Harris was lying about the wild stories that he told. He had not.
He then asked if Ross had personal knowledge of who actually answered
the test questions. Ross did not. In answering the DA's questions,
Ross admitted that the diagnosis of MPD (DID) is controversial.

R. Christopher Barden, Ph.D., J.D. testified: "If something is
controversial it means it's not generally acceptable." He also
testified: "Because something is in the DSM doesn't mean it's reliable
or should be allowed in a court of law." The DSM is a kind of
dictionary or catalog so psychiatrists are "using the same language."

Barden said the number of mental health professionals who tout
dissociative identity disorder as viable are few and far between.
"There are a few pockets of people left who are doing this. The
scientists I know condemn it to be the worst kind of junk science and
dangerous to the public. Controversial and experimental theories
should not be allowed to contaminate the legal system."

The Judge ruled these disorders are controversial and are not
generally accepted in the scientific community. He ordered jury to
disregard the testimony of Colin Ross.

 

[The Norseman]

 

[TubbaBlubba]

I thought 'House' was above this sort of nonsense, but I guess I was wrong. Oh, well.

There's a lot of medical inaccuracy in House. Take the second episode of the first season. "No, we can't put these teenagers under anaesthesia!" (for some reason that applies to infants, I think) or whatever it was.

House is absurd entertainment, not a medical documentary. I like it, it is very entertaining, but there's a lot of nonsense in it.

 

[Roma]

Read "Sybil Exposed" by Debbie Nathan to know more about this. This book just came out recently and delves deep into the most popular book/movie about DID (or Multiple Personality Disorder as it used to be called).

Basically, this pt. most likely had pernicious anemia, which can and probably did cause psychiatric symptoms for her. Couple that with an overzealous therapist who wanted to be "known for something", who got her pt. addicted to Pentathol, an addictice barbituate, and who actually ended up living with this celebrity pt. and you have the perfect storm for a nationwide panic about a disorder that very few people actually have. Before "Sybil", there were around 200 cases of what could have been known as MPD. After the popularity of Sybil, there were around 40000 cases, mostly women with dependent personalities.

It's a fascinating book and a sad story.

It is an interesting theory that many patients misdiagnosed with MPD/DID actually have pernicious anemia, something that I've just read about lately.
That information might have been helpful to me twenty-five years ago when Dr.Colin Ross misdiagnosed me with MPD. I have a strong family history of pernicious anemia and had been treated for that ten years before meeting said lunatic psychiatrist.
Still might not have been of any importance to him though, pernicious anemia is not as "interesting" as having dozens of alternate personalities with lurid stories of sexual perversion and Satanic/alien/CIA plots and conspiracies.

 

[The Norseman]

There's a lot of medical inaccuracy in House. Take the second episode of the first season. "No, we can't put these teenagers under anaesthesia!" (for some reason that applies to infants, I think) or whatever it was.

House is absurd entertainment, not a medical documentary. I like it, it is very entertaining, but there's a lot of nonsense in it.

I ran across this blog by an actual medical doctor who critiques the shows and is really quite informative.

 

[Weak Kitten]

Wow, that's really sad Roma. I looked up pernicious anemia and from the sound of it that is a fairly easily treated condition but pretty nasty if untreated. Still, there are so many other symptoms besides just personality change and mood swings that any doctor not recognizing that there are other problems is not doing their job. I hope you have a better doctor now.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

I ran across this blog by an actual medical doctor who critiques the shows and is really quite informative.

I made the mistake of watching the aforementioned episode with my father. He's an anaesthesiologist. Yeah.


But as I said, it's supposed to be absurd. House is to MD:s what James Bond is to spies.

 

[Robrob]

I made the mistake of watching the aforementioned episode with my father. He's an anaesthesiologist. Yeah.


But as I said, it's supposed to be absurd. House is to MD:s what James Bond is to spies.

Anyone who bases their perception of any profession by what they see on TV/movies is an .

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Anyone who bases their perception of any profession by what they see on TV/movies is an .

I've met a good number of people who want to become physicians, particularly infection specialists, after watching House. I guess it's the CSI effect all over again.

 

[Robrob]

I've met a good number of people who want to become physicians, particularly infection specialists, after watching House. I guess it's the CSI effect all over again.

I'm in law enforcement. I can tell you all about the "CSI effect."

 

[Mudcat]

Southern California, not Northern.

I saw an older episode of Law & Order the other day, involving Dissociative Identity Disorder. At first they think one of the personalities committed the murder as protection, but then they figured out a different personality killed the psychiatrist because she lied. The only reason this episode stands out for me is the actress who played the character with DID also shills a migraine medicine, so every time I see the advert, I think it's her multiple personalities that are causing the migraine.

I'm aware of the episode you are talking about and the girl was eventually revealed to have been faking it. That and it was her sister who committed the crime.

 

[Roma]

Well the aforementioned lunatic Dr.Colin Ross was a consultant on the television show "United States of Tara", maybe he was hired as a consultant for "House", who knows.

Anyway, my cousin is in the RCMP and told me that the old T.V. show "Barney Miller" was a pretty accurate depiction of his police station.

And "Jersey Shore" is absolutely exactly like my neighbourhood, except for the people and the location

 

[John Albert]

Anyway, my cousin is in the RCMP and told me that the old T.V. show "Barney Miller" was a pretty accurate depiction of his police station.

I've had a few cops tell me that Barney Miller was generally accurate.