Year: 2013
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The study is a narrative study based on two life history interviews (n = 2) with people who have dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple personality disorder (MPD). The study also includes five interviews (n = 12) with professionals, who in their work meet people with DID. The study investigates how people with DID are experiencing the encounter with Mental Health Care and Social Services and how their experiences of the diagnosis relates to stigma. A certain interest is taken in how stigma is experieced in their encounters with Mental Health Care professionals and Social Services and how the diagnosis is understood by professionals. The results indicates that the diagnosis is experienced as a legitimation to feel hurt and suffer in relation to early childhood trauma. The diagnosis is also understood as a natural way to deal with severe trauma, which sets it apart from most other mental disorders. A problem is that the diagnosis itself also acts as an external stigma in encounters with Mental Health Care and Social Services since it is experienced as an questioned diagnosis. The professional field is described as a polarized field between those who believe the diagnosis to be a result of trauma or those who see it as a state induced by a therapist, the media or otherwise question the legitimacy of the diagnosis. The external stigma is thwarted by a situation were the diagnosis itself is associated with a sense of mastery and as such can be seen as a means of survival rather than the expression of disease.
Author: Fredrika Pettersson
Language: Swedish
Subfield: Psychiatry and Mental health
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1767449316