![]() The medical opinions and their reports set out clear directions for my immediate and intermittent care, suggesting that I should be living back in the community. That help and support was invaluable and I will always be grateful for the time given to help me accept logically at least this diagnosis. One of the experts helped me too by allowing me to ask questions about the diagnosis, about losing time, and this thing they called switching. Much of this was done via a telephone as I was in the unit 200 miles from home. Little did I realise that inside me was most probably in turmoil at my denial, denial which has featured so much in the 6 years since.Įventually softly and gently she helped me to understand the things the experts had said, she helped me to come to terms with this new diagnosis and all that it entailed. I remember that as tears streamed down my face I hung up the phone saying everyone was wrong, I didn’t have other parts inside of me. I recall being angry at her as I wanted her to support my view that the experts were wrong. My daughter didn’t seem so perplexed and said she thought it all made sense, it certainly made sense of her childhood. I explained what they had told me and the information their reports contained, I remember saying how perplexed I was that they claimed to have seen me switch. When I was informed I had Dissociative Identity Disorder I remember feeling perplexed and disbelieving, I called my daughter and said I thought the experts were bonkers. Extra restrictions placed upon me as a result of a lack of their understanding and knowledge of dissociative disorders was frustrating and just another thing I had to deal with at what was a stressful time. No one seemed to understand that I had been losing time and switching for ages and nothing had changed except I now had a label and we now knew why I lost time. If I wanted to go out on leave I was suddenly deemed a greater risk as I could switch alters. The staff in the unit found it difficult that I lost time, and suddenly I was treated more like a young child than the adult I was. ![]() Unsurprisingly she also deemed I had D.I.D and suddenly changed her view of me, she wasn’t helpful about this and suddenly my losing time and I now realise switching, became something of an issue. I remember feeling cautious and looking back if anything I probably understated my symptoms. I had no idea what these people expected from me but my answers were on each case as honest as I could be. In between their assessments and their reports the units psychiatrist decided she better assess me as well, so I was assessed using the SCID-D for a third time. I was surprised that they had seen me switch alters as I had no concept of this, I just thought I had got tired and lost time and I was by now use to losing chunks of time. I had no concept of D.I.D and these two professionals both had to explain to me verbally after their assessments what D.I.D was. I also found the information in their reports hard to read as suddenly staring me in the face was the evidence that I dissociate. ![]() ![]() So trying to understand terms such as Dissociative Fugue or Derealisation was complex and difficult. Their scores from the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-V Dissociative Disorder (SCID-D) were within a point of each other and they had highlighted things which I really had no idea or understanding about.Īt the time I was in a locked unit and had no internet access, in truth I felt lucky to have phone access as this wasn’t always the case. The reality was his report was potentially going to be used at a Mental Health Act Tribunal.īut I was surprised that the two experts came to the same findings in respect of my diagnosis of D.I.D, yet they did not know about each other’s assessment of me and the reports were written independently of one another. As I stated before in my blog ‘Getting My Diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder’ their reports differed in that the forensic psychologists report covered far more detail, he had for instance assessed my level of risk. The two medical professionals who assessed me and diagnosed me with Dissociative Identity Disorder produced rather lengthy reports. This is one of a series of posts about life pre and post diagnosis, the early years ![]()
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