Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, Dissociative Identity Disorder: Which of these has the highest prevalence in DSM-5, and higher than it had in DSM-IV?

Most psychiatrists, psychologists, science reporters, and members of the general public would get this question wrong. There is a myth that dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) was a fad diagnosis—beginning with the publication of Sybil in 1970s and lasting through the 1990s—but that now it has gone back to being rare. That is a myth, as is seen if you compare the figures for prevalence given in the last two editions of the psychiatric diagnostic manual, DSM-IV (1994) and DSM-5 (2013).

The prevalence figures for how common these conditions are in the general public are as follows:

DSM-IV (1994)

Schizophrenia: 0.5%—1.0%

Bipolar Disorder: 0.4%—1.6%

Dissociative Identity: too controversial to give a figure

DSM-5 (2013)

Schizophrenia: 0.3%—0.7%

Bipolar Disorder: 0.6%

Dissociative Identity: 1.5% (1.6% in males; 1.4% in females)

The above figures are not cast in stone, since various studies have different results, depending on where the studies were done and the methods used. The above figures are a consensus of experts based on all available studies. So just note the magnitude and trends.

Of the three conditions, multiple personality is the most common, and it is the only one whose trend is toward being both more and more certain.