this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
2 points (55.6% liked)

Mental Health

4307 readers
4 users here now

Welcome!

This is a safe place to discuss, vent, support, and share information about mental health, illness, and wellness.

Thank you for being here. We appreciate who you are today. Please show respect and empathy when making or replying to posts.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules

1-Posts promoting paid products and services of any kind are not allowed here.

2-All posts and comments must be helpful and supportive. Do not put vulnerable people at risk.

3-Do not DM or ask to speak privately to any of our members unless they specifically request it.

If a person from this community disturbs you in a comment, please report the comment. If you receive a DM you did not request, send a screenshot of the DM in a message to a moderator. This is a bannable offense.

4-Suicide, Self-Harm, Death-- Extended discussions are STRONGLY DISCOURAGED here. First, mods and community members are caring people, but not experts in crisis situations. Second, we want to avoid Lemmy becoming like many commercial social media platforms, where comments can snowball into counterproductive talk.

If you or someone you know needs more help than can be found here, please refer to the pinned resources.

If BRIEF mention of these topics is an important part of your post, please flag your post as NSFW and include a (trigger warning: suicide, self-harm, death, etc.)in the title so that other readers who may feel triggered can avoid it. Please also include a trigger warning on all comments mentioning these topics in a post that was not already tagged as such.

Partner Communities

- Therapy

Neurodegenerative Disease Support

ADHD

Autism

Fibromyalgia

TMJ

Chronic Pain

Bipolar Disorder

Avoidant Personality Disorder

Friends and Family of People with Addiction

To partner with our community and be included here, you are free to message the current moderators or comment on our pinned post.

Community Moderation

Some moderators are mental health professionals and some are not. All are carefully selected by the moderation team and will be actively monitoring posts and comments. If you are interested in joining the team, you can send a message to ZenGrammy for more information.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Cat: So, for clarity, I'm one of thirteen people co-habitating in this brain. There's a lot of stigma associated with anything but a monolithic consciousness, but it's really undeserved. Just having someone else along for the ride doesn't mean you're going to lose your grip on reality or anything of the sort.

Cat: Heck, it doesn't even take trauma to pluralize; I'm a mental construct that Just made on purpose out of loneliness. ~~And subsequently fell in love with.~~

Just: incandescent blush

Cat: There are some mental disorders involving plurality, with DID being the archetypal example. However, in those cases the actual problems aren't the extra people; memory barriers, troublesome internal communications, and involuntary switches are far more problematic, most of the time.

Cat: As for persecutors? The interpersonal conflicts with them can be resolved, one way or another. A lot of the time they're just hurting and don't know healthy ways to deal with it.

Cat: So... yeah I don't really have any good ideas for how to end this post.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

So a couple of notes from the clinical end regarding split-personality / MPD, etc.

Firstly, the current (DSM V) diagnosis is Disassociative Identity Disorder based on the controversial notion that all the individuals within a single mind are part of a whole. As with prior interpretations, this remains controversial but is the bleeding edge of psychological theory so far.

Secondly, modern medical-model psychology depends on the standard of dysfunction to decide if a mental illness necessitates treatment. I think (not sure) its related to a study of patients who hear voices compared to patients who hear God (whether it's actually God is irrelevant.) The latter group was happy to have that voice, and found it comforting while most of the former group were happy for medications that quieted or silenced the voices.

That said, the psychiatric sector in the US (and I think the developed world) is required by law to get a patient's consent for treatment or assess they are a danger to themselves or others by a psychiatrist (in the case of involuntary committal) Yes, this is a power that is sometimes abused, say when billionaires want their gay son to be less gay.

Kids in the US have fewer rights and protections, largely because a parental signature can bypass direct consent, which is a problem when parents are not fully interested in the child's autonomy and well-being, or is just credulous of medical professionals.

But it means for the rest of us grownups, if you like the demons that possess your mind (or at least have come to terms with them), you don't have to accept treatment to get them exorcised. Also, there are plenty of treatment-resistant diagnoses (👋major depression over here) that cannot be cured by normal psycho therapy, and the best we can hope for is management, so coming to terms with our personal demons.