Most Psychiatrists Do Not Have An Informed Opinion About Multiple Personality: Another Reason

I have a number of past posts on why most psychiatrists miss the diagnosis of multiple personality: They are clueless, because the mental status examination that they are taught to use fails to inquire about memory gaps (search “mental status”).

But there is an important additional reason that most psychiatrists ignore, and may be prejudiced against, multiple personality: The primary treatment of multiple personality is a certain kind of psychotherapy (1), not medication.

And as you can see from the following recent article in Psychiatric News (newspaper of The American Psychiatric Association), most psychiatrists nowadays do not know or do psychotherapy: “Should Psychotherapy Be a Psychiatric Subspecialty?” https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2020.3b6

Added April 11, 2020: It is not just most psychiatrists who don't have an informed opinion about multiple personality. It is also academic and social psychologists, who do not usually do psychotherapy. It is also clinical psychologists and other psychotherapists who do psychotherapy, but have never learned how to diagnose and treat multiple personality, because it is a subspecialty that is not included in most professional training.

Multiple personality disorder (renamed dissociative identity disorder) is in the official diagnostic manual, DSM-5 (and was in DSM-III and DSM-IV previously), because professionals who do know its diagnosis and treatment have published peer-reviewed studies to prove its validity.

1. Frank W. Putnam, M.D. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.