mcgirl55 asked this question on 5/4/2000:

Dear Liveagain, I am creating a portfolio for my Lit/Comp class. The topic I chose was MPD. {multiple personality disorder} I was wondering if you had any experiance in the field. If so, I would greatly appreciate it if you would answer a few of my questions. Otherwise... Thank you for your time. 1} How long and to what extent is you experience with MPD? 2} What kinds of things have you noticed about the disease? 3} What do you believe is the most common cause of MPD? 4} How does it affect the families of MPD sufferers? 5} Does the patient ALWAYS "black out" while being another personality? 6} What is the hardest part of MPD for the patient? 7} What is the hardest part for the psychologist? 8} Who is hit the hardest with MPD? 9} Are there any interesting aspects included with the disease? 10} What is your personal opinion on MPD?

Thank you very much for your time. Your help is greatly appreciated. Anything you would to add would also be wonderful. Thanks again, Becca

Liveagain gave this response on 5/4/2000:

I started my studies on MPD in 1971 when I was a student at Radford University, located in Radford, Va. Of course it wasn't called that then. The psych. class was a required class but it sparked my interest in a fields of psychology. I did psych student nursing at St. Albans Psych. Hospital located in Radford, Va. and have taken just about every class I could in Psych. I also worked for Dr. Milton Kibbe after he retired from being the director of South Western State Hopspital located in Stanton, Va. and opened a private practice in Radford, Va. I really learned alot from him:-) He was a very patient teacher. This disease is usually caused from severe childhood abuse and it's usually from a close family memeber. The person then has a break off of personalities to "protect" the abused one. The separate personalities are much stronger than the original one. Read the book Sybil. It's a perfect example about what happens to children who develope this disease. They have different names and one doesn't know the other one. The family ususally don't realize that the person with this disease has it until they leave home and start doing strange things. Example: The first personality might be a school teacher with a wonderful understanding of the children in her class. At night she might be a "hooker" and doesn't even remember that she is a school teacher. Different names, different personalities, different directions and different journeys. Another personality that she might have is one of self mutelation and doesn't remember doing it when she snaps of this "trance" so to speak. The three faces of Eve is also a good book to read. The biggest problem the family memebers have with this is accepting their part of the responsibility for what they did to a child. No family wants to look at another family memeber and realize what they have been capable of doing. Usually they know and covered it up or hid it due to financial support or they were from prom. families and it would have tarnished the reputation, or they were just plain out of it themselves. The family was a dysfunctional family to begin with. The hardest part of curing these people is to get all personalities out in the open and to talk about what actually happened to them to make them like this. There has been reports that one lady had 30 different personalities and had been terrible abused as a child. The hardest part of the psychiatrist is to get all personalities out. When this happens then the person starts to heal. My personal opinion on this is that too much of this is being shoved under the carpet. That's why one sees so many homeless people. Most of these people are unable to function as normal human beings. Too many state hospitals are being shut down and too many prisons are being built. These people don't need to be in prison, or on the street. They need attention so they can become productive memembers of society and the people who made them like that needs to be in the prison system, in my humble opinion. You can't say who is the hardest hit because people from the wealthiest of families have had children come out of homes with this type of disease. There have been movies made from true stories about this very thing. In my opinion, it's one of the most leading mental disorder that we have in the USA right now. And the way society is right now, if it continues on this trend we'll see more and more of this. Like those kids that killed those kids in CO. They had personality disorders that came from somewhere. Who wasn't watching who is my question. Hope I helped you. Psychology is a very interesting subject and a very interesting field. To understand it one has to have compassion and understanding of people's emotions. That's the only way one can be helped.