Student Independent Projects Psychology 2015: The Relationship Between 3 Types of Abuse and Dissociative Identity Disorder

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) affects 1% of the general population. Over the years, there has been increasing evidence supporting the idea of DID resulting from different forms of childhood abuse. Sexual abuse, physical abuse, and emotional abuse or neglect have all been shown to have some effect on DID symptoms to some extent. Sexual abuse has been linked to the most symptoms of DID. This may suggest that having DID as a result of sexual abuse early in life may result in more symptoms related to DID when compared to those who have DID as a result of physical abuse or emotional abuse. As I predicted, children who were sexually abused experienced a greater range of symptoms related to DID than children who were physically or emotionally abused. There was a bit of overlap between symptoms in children who were sexually or physically abused, but not much overlap with emotional abuse. This may be because children emotional trauma is usually present in victims of sexual and physical abuse, so these children do not only experience physical trauma, but emotional trauma as well.