“Multiple personalities”

 

“Severe trauma can cause a unique kind of mental breakdown - dissociative identity disorder (DID), which creates multiple personalities. What is it like trying to live with this condition?”

 

“Until she was 40 years old, Melanie Goodwin had no memory of her life before the age of 16. Then, a family tragedy triggered a cataclysmic psychological change. Suddenly she was aware of other identities inside her, and the barriers between them were crumbling. The different identities belonged to her, Melanie felt, but ‘her’ at different ages, from three years’ old to 16 and on into adulthood.

These ages were not random. Amid the confusing, terrifying mingling of different voices in one consciousness came memories of child abuse, the first episode occurring when she was three, the last when she was 16. “I have no proof,” she notes. “I have to go with what I believe happened, and my reality.”

Melanie has what used to be called multiple personality disorder, which is now more commonly referred to as dissociative identity disorder (DID). (...)” (Lido em: BBC, 2017-06-150