Fiction Writers, as a group, have both more Bipolar (and depression) and more Multiple Personality (dissociation), but these two conditions are quite different.

If fiction writers are said to have more than their fair share of mood disorders (depression and bipolar), but I say that fiction writers also have more than their fair share of multiple personality (a dissociative condition), you may wonder if these two kinds of conditions are really all that different from each other.

An article in this month’s American Journal of Psychiatry reports on a study of how much dissociation (the main psychological mechanism of dissociative disorders like multiple personality) is found in various psychiatric conditions.

They found that Multiple Personality (dissociative identity) had the most dissociation, while Bipolar Disorder had the least dissociation: Bipolar and Multiple Personality were found to be the most different from each other.

American Journal of Psychiatry, January 2018

Dissociation in Psychiatric Disorders: A Meta-Analysis of Studies Using the Dissociative Experiences Scale

Abstract

Objective:

…Symptoms of dissociation are present in a variety of mental disorders …This meta-analysis offers a systematic and evidence-based study of the prevalence and distribution of dissociation, as assessed by the Dissociative Experiences Scale, within different categories of mental disorders…

Method:

More than 1,900 original publications were screened, and 216 were included in the meta-analysis, comprising 15,219 individuals in 19 diagnostic categories.

Results:

The largest mean dissociation scores were found in dissociative disorders (mean scores >35), followed by posttraumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, and conversion disorder (mean scores >25). Somatic symptom disorder, substance-related and addictive disorders, feeding and eating disorders, schizophrenia, anxiety disorder, OCD, and most affective disorders also showed mean dissociation scores >15. Bipolar disorders yielded the lowest dissociation scores (mean score, 14.8).

My Comment

It is definitely not the same thing to say that fiction writers have more mood problems (depression and bipolar) and more dissociative conditions (e.g., dissociative fugue, dissociative amnesia, multiple personality). As the above study underlines, the two kinds of conditions are quite distinct. Indeed, bipolar and multiple personality are the most different and distinct from each other.

Of course, this study was not needed to realize how different the mood conditions and multiple personality are from each other. The symptoms of depression and bipolar simply do not include the defining symptoms of multiple personality (alternate personalities and memory gaps). But I suspect that some people are misled by the term “bipolar”: It refers to alternate moods (mania and depression) and has nothing to do with alternate personalities.

Why would writers have a higher incidence of both mood disorders and dissociative conditions? Two reasons. First, both are more common in people with a history of childhood traumatic experiences. Second, multiple personality (the normal version) is an asset in writing fiction, so people with this asset are drawn to it.