People with MPD or Multiple Personality Disorder are patients with multiple, distinct personalities or identities within one mind.  These multiple personalities often vary widely in regard to numbers, definition, relationship to host personality and frequency of outside control. Multiple Personality Disorder is often confused with schizophrenia, but it is totally different.

The theme of this article is answering the question – Can extreme anxiety cause or produce MPD?   The answer to that question is a qualified ‘Yes’.  It is a qualified answer because there are many potential triggers for MPD and no evidence that an anxiety sufferer will become an MPD sufferer.   The reverse perspective is also worth considering. Many MPD sufferers possess anxiety disorders interweaved among the different identities but there is little evidence that the presence of multiple personalities themselves generated the anxiety disorder.

The element of cause that we are pursuing here is the tendency in certain extreme cases of anxiety for the patient’s psyche to unconsciously seek an escape from the horrid existence that their life has become.  If this occurs, it is possible for that release to take the form of identities – called Alters – one or more of which is better able to cope with the anxiety.  However, the cases wherein anxiety alone caused MPD are few.

Multiple Personality Disorder is highly predictive in regard to its primary occurrences – namely with the psyches of patients who were systematically abused either sexually or physically.  Therefore, it is predictive that the disorder tends to develop during childhood and is much more prevalent in women.  There may be some conclusive evidence of its occurrence within a single family but no proof of hereditary transmission.

Treating MPD is a long and complex process.   This is true because the disorder reacts differently from patient to patient and within the patient themselves, where the various personalities appear and disappear as the need arises.  Treating MPD is like treating a child by communicating with its parents.   This can take the forms of depersonalization, derealization, and even amnesia.  Most specific regimens treat multiple symptoms – including a panic attack with both medication – to prevent anxiety attacks – and deep cognitive behavior modification.  The most notable strategy is to make it more positive – or less painful – for the primary personality to be in control and moving the aberrant Alters into a minor position of control and presence.