Children and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

Many extreme child abuse situations can lead to the development of psychiatric problems, the most common being dissociation, aka Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

In her biography Twenty-Two Faces Jenny Hill recounts that as a five year-old she was raped, tortured, watched another child murdered, plus threatened with death if she told. Since her mind was not allowed to process the stressful experiences and in order to cope, her thinking patterns separated into twenty-two multiple personalities who repressed the traumatic memories.

As she grew up and when she was under stress these alters continued to "protect" her by frequently coming forth. Alter takeovers caused the young woman to miss minutes, hours, days, sometimes even months of time, yet she had no idea as to how, why, or what happened.

Though Jenny's case is an extreme example of dissociation, the separation of thinking patterns because of trauma is, unfortunately, not all that uncommon. Dissociation is found in a variety of diagnoses. Just as another form of dissociation, Post Traumatic Stress, is a rampant diagnosis for veterans of war, children under prolonged stress are most likely to develop the most extreme form of dissociation or multiple personalities. Their still-maturing brains and vulnerability, aka having little or no control over repetitive abuse, is ripe for the young brain's neurons that form during the trauma, to somehow not connect, thinking patterns then separate and memories of the abuse automatically repress.

Every year child welfare agencies in the U.S. collect sufficient evidence to substantiate more than a million instances of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. In the majority of cases this maltreatment leads to the development of psychiatric problems, again the most common for children being dissociation.

According to the American Psychiatric Association diagnostic manual, the DSM, the Dissociate Identity Disorder diagnosis (DID) is also apparent in 65% of the general adult population, 11% of whom require treatment while up to 30% of those in therapy are found to have undergone physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse in childhood.