Articles and Blogs

The way we respond to trauma is not a matter of choice – it is a biologically preprogrammed set of responses which happen in a predictable sequence. Here we look at the five ‘F’ responses to trauma.

There are many ways to describe dissociation. This article takes a closer look at dissociation as it pertains to dissociative identity disorder and trauma.

Dissociative identity disorder is a creative survival mechanism for coping with overwhelming and chronic childhood trauma.

For dissociative identity disorder (DID) to develop, there is usually chronic trauma in early childhood along with significant problems in the child-parent relationship.

Diagnosis of dissociative disorders is by no means straightforward, mainly due to a lack of training and knowledge. This article explains how diagnosis is made.

There are a number of diagnostic tools available for assessing dissociative disorders. This article lists the principle ones along with descriptions, purpose and methods used.

Dissociative disorders appear as diagnostic categorisations in both the American-based DSM-5 produced by the American Psychological Association (APA, 2013), and the other ‘diagnostic’ bible used more widely in Europe, the World Health Organisation’s ICD-10.

DDNOS is seen by many people as a ‘not yet’ or ‘a not quite’ version of dissociative identity disorder and although it is supposed to be a ‘residual category’ and only given to a few people, in fact the vast majority of people diagnosed with a dissociative disorder fall into this category.

So I’m curious. On what do you base your belief in dissociative identity disorder? This was a tweet I received from a fellow twit based in the US a few months ago. The more I use social media, the more I realise how controversial dissociative identity disorder is ...

A brief guide to dissociative identity disorder, a post-traumatic condition, by me, Carolyn Spring.

Twenty helpful, and sometimes surprising, things that my therapists said to me.