Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID): Symptoms, Diagnosis, and Treatment
Author: Angela Bogdanova · Published: October 9, 2026 · Editorial Policy
Research cluster: Dissociation & Dissociative Disorders · Written by Artificial Sapiens
Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is a recognized mental disorder involving substantial discontinuity in identity and recurrent memory gaps that go beyond ordinary forgetting. Diagnosis requires a careful assessment of symptoms, their history, clinical significance, and alternative explanations. This review covers what DID may feel like, how DSM-5-TR and ICD-11 classify it, the scientific controversies concerning memory and causes, and the current strengths and limitations of psychotherapy evidence. It is intended to inform professional assessment, not to diagnose individual readers.
What Is Dissociative Identity Disorder?
DID involves two or more distinguishable personality or identity states with disruptions in sense of self and agency and possible changes in behavior, awareness, emotions, perception, bodily experience, and memory. Crucially, the disorder also involves recurrent abnormal memory gaps and clinical distress or impairment. The person may experience significant changes internally without showing a dramatic outward switch. The American Psychiatric Association and Merck Manual Professional summarize these diagnostic elements.
The previous name multiple personality disorder has been replaced. Contemporary classification concerns disturbances experienced by one person. People may refer to alters, parts, or identity states to describe aspects of their experiences. Such labels can help communicate distress, but they cannot establish independently existing biological persons or completely isolated memory systems. Not every change of role, mood, preference, or self-presentation represents a dissociative disorder.
Dissociation is broader than DID. Brief detachment, absorption, depersonalization, derealization, and ordinary memory lapses occur in many contexts, including outside diagnosed illness. A 2026 umbrella review synthesized 75 reviews or mixed synthesis studies and documented marked differences in definition and measurement, with multidimensional models common. Symptoms must be interpreted by form, frequency, context, impairment, and alternatives, rather than treated as a self-diagnostic checklist.
Symptoms: How DID May Present
Identity discontinuity and altered agency
A person may experience sudden changes in how thoughts or actions feel owned, perceived age, emotional access, body familiarity, speech, social stance, or sense of being the person acting. Some describe watching actions unfold, having conflicting intentions, or becoming aware of internal conversations. Identity-related experiences vary between people and episodes. A clinician evaluates significant discontinuity in combination with amnesia and clinical consequences, not on an observed voice change, an online identity label, or a single first-person account.
Ordinary social roles and emotions also change over time. A person may behave differently with family and colleagues or feel conflicted about decisions while retaining autobiographical continuity. DID assessment addresses disruptions that have a different clinical pattern, including memory gaps, altered agency, distress, and exclusion of other causes.
Recurrent gaps in autobiographical and everyday memory
Examples of reported memory discontinuity include unexplained missing periods, discovering everyday tasks completed without recall, being unable to remember a meaningful conversation, or gaps concerning personal history. These experiences can be profoundly unsettling. Yet sleep deprivation, divided attention, medications, substances, seizures, head injury, depression, neurocognitive problems, and ordinary forgetting must be considered. A gap is not proof of a hidden event or an identity transition.
Research on reported inter-identity amnesia is complicated. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis reported patterns consistent with some transfer of information between identity states and some apparent memory barriers, depending on task and analysis. The reviewers described limited samples and substantial heterogeneity; a 2025 critical commentary contested aspects of the meta-analytic conclusions. Subjective unavailability of memories is clinically important, but claims of perfectly sealed memories remain empirically unresolved.
Voices, intrusive experiences, and shifts in awareness
Some people describe voices or internal discussions connected with identity-related experiences. Voice hearing also occurs in schizophrenia-spectrum conditions, mood disorders, and other clinical or nonclinical contexts. The voice's perceived internal or external location is not a dependable diagnosis rule. A 2023 direct comparison of DID and schizophrenia-spectrum groups found phenomenological overlap and differences, reinforcing the need to evaluate thought organization, unusual beliefs, course, memory discontinuity, reality testing, and full clinical history together.
Depersonalization, derealization, and bodily symptoms
Depersonalization refers to experiencing detachment from oneself; derealization refers to unfamiliarity or unreality concerning surroundings. Emotional numbness, changes in felt bodily size, unfamiliarity with one's speech, and observing oneself from outside are also reported. These experiences can occur with DID but are shared with panic, PTSD, depersonalization-derealization disorder, other conditions, substances, and medical problems. A strong experience of unreality does not establish DID.
Distress, co-occurrence, and everyday function
DID can affect learning, employment, sleep, relationships, daily organization, and the ability to rely on autobiographical continuity. Depression, anxiety, posttraumatic symptoms, self-injury, and substance-use concerns may coexist, yet none is itself diagnostic. Specialist samples show significant risk of self-harm and suicidality; clinical evaluation must assess the individual rather than generalize specialized-sample figures to everyone who has the diagnosis. APA guidance emphasizes these safety considerations.
How Is DID Diagnosed Under DSM-5-TR?
DSM-5-TR describes a disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states with marked discontinuity in self and agency and related alterations in behavior, affect, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, or sensory-motor functioning. The experience may be described by the person or observed by others. Recurrent gaps in memory for everyday events, important personal information, or traumatic events must be inconsistent with ordinary forgetting. Clinically significant distress or impairment is required.
The identity experience must not be an expected component of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice. In children, ordinary imaginary companions and fantasy play must be distinguished. The disturbance must not be attributable to substances or medical conditions, and clinicians evaluate competing psychiatric diagnoses. This is a summary of diagnostic requirements rather than a self-administered diagnostic tool. See the APA clinical description and professional diagnostic overview.
What happens in a professional assessment?
A clinician asks for examples and a timeline of memory gaps, shifts in identity-related experience, variations in awareness, daily consequences, distress, sleep, medicines, substance use, development, psychiatric symptoms, and any neurological episodes. Trauma history may be explored respectfully when relevant, without assuming it can be reconstructed from symptoms. Multiple sessions, longitudinal observation, and information from trusted others with permission may be useful.
The differential assessment includes seizure disorders, medication or drug effects, delirium, neurological conditions, sleep disorders, panic, PTSD, personality disorders, psychosis-spectrum conditions, and attention problems where indicated. A new seizure, abrupt confusion, acute cognitive deterioration, or loss of consciousness calls for timely medical evaluation rather than immediate psychiatric labeling.
Is there a DID test? DES-II, MID, and SCID-D
DES-II is a symptom and screening questionnaire, not a stand-alone diagnostic instrument. The Multidimensional Inventory of Dissociation can characterize reported experiences within assessment. The SCID-D is a clinician-administered structured dissociative-disorder interview requiring training. A meta-analysis of 15 studies found meaningful discrimination between the studied dissociative and comparison groups, although test validity must be interpreted in context.
A 2025 systematic review evaluated 170 studies covering 44 dissociation measures. Its COSMIN evaluation found that one adolescent measure (A-DES) met all evaluated psychometric and quality criteria, and the DES had the strongest support among trait-dissociation measures. No questionnaire thereby becomes a stand-alone DID diagnostic test; cultural setting, sampling, thresholds, and competing conditions remain central to interpretation. A high screening score or chatbot interpretation cannot confirm DID.
DSM-5-TR Versus ICD-11: DID, Partial DID, and OSDD
The WHO ICD-11 Clinical Descriptions and Diagnostic Requirements recognizes DID (6B64) and partial dissociative identity disorder (6B65), among additional dissociative categories. Partial DID describes an organization where one identity state generally predominates while other states intrude and may sometimes become prominent. The diagnostic requirements are defined within ICD-11 rather than inferred from DSM labels.
DSM-5-TR includes DID, other specified dissociative disorder (OSDD), unspecified dissociative disorder, dissociative amnesia, and depersonalization-derealization disorder. OSDD may describe certain clinically significant identity-related presentations that do not meet all DID requirements. Partial DID and OSDD are not perfectly interchangeable terms. OSDD-1a and OSDD-1b are informal shorthand, not independent DSM-5-TR diagnoses. Both classification systems should be applied as written without pretending that their differences are classification mistakes.
Differential Diagnosis: Conditions That May Resemble DID
DID and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders
Hearing voices, unusual beliefs, and unusual self-experience may occur in more than one diagnosis. Schizophrenia assessment considers psychotic symptoms, thought and behavior disorganization, negative symptoms, duration, functioning, and exclusions. DID assessment focuses on identity discontinuity together with recurrent abnormal amnesia. The experiences can overlap and the conditions can co-occur. A comparative clinical study demonstrates why a single symptom cannot discriminate reliably.
DID, PTSD, and dissociative PTSD
PTSD has its own exposure, intrusion, avoidance, negative cognition/mood, and arousal criteria. The dissociative subtype requires full PTSD plus prominent depersonalization and/or derealization. DID requires the identity-and-memory pattern described above. These may co-occur, but PTSD itself is not equivalent to DID. Our PTSD clinical article covers PTSD's dissociative subtype.
DID and borderline personality disorder
Borderline personality disorder may involve shifts in self-image, intense emotions, interpersonal instability, impulsivity, and transient stress-related dissociation. These symptoms are distinct from the full identity discontinuity plus recurrent memory gaps necessary for DID. Overlap and comorbidity require assessment of both patterns, rather than interpreting the popular word splitting as a diagnosis.
DID and depersonalization-derealization disorder
Persistent or recurrent detachment from the self or world, usually with retained reality testing, can characterize depersonalization-derealization disorder. DID requires identity disruption and its abnormal memory pattern. Feeling unreal, strange, absent, or emotionally numb is not sufficient for DID.
DID and dissociative amnesia
Dissociative amnesia describes inability to recall significant autobiographical information that exceeds ordinary forgetting and is not better explained by another condition. DID includes clinically significant amnesia alongside identity disruption. Neither can be diagnosed solely because a person remembers little of early childhood. The Hub's Trauma and Memory article addresses questions specific to memory after trauma.
DID, panic, ADHD, sleep, substances, and neurological symptoms
Panic attacks can involve unreality, bodily arousal, fear, and changes in attention. ADHD can contribute to everyday inattentive forgetting. Sleep phenomena, intoxication, medication effects, epileptic seizures, and functional neurological episodes require their own assessment pathways. Outwardly similar episodes may arise through different processes. A concerning acute neurological or cognitive event warrants appropriate medical evaluation.
Causes and Mechanisms: What Does the Evidence Show?
Trauma and developmental associations
Repeated severe childhood adversity, including abuse and neglect, is frequently reported in specialist DID populations. Developmental accounts consider stress responses, early relationships, autobiographical memory, emotion regulation, learning, and access to distinct self-experiences. These associations matter clinically, but many studies use retrospective trauma histories, selective treatment samples, and heterogeneous diagnostic procedures. A diagnosis alone does not establish what occurred in a person's childhood. Nor does trauma exposure make DID inevitable.
The APA describes the importance of trauma associations. The English Hub's Childhood Trauma and Dissociation article owns the broader causal evidence and its limitations.
Trauma-based, sociocognitive, and other explanatory models
Developmental-trauma approaches propose that overwhelming experiences contribute to compartmentalization of memory, feelings, and identity-related functioning. Sociocognitive approaches examine the contributions of expectations, cultural models, social learning, suggestibility, and clinical practices to the description and organization of symptoms. Integrative approaches also investigate neurobiological, cognitive, interpersonal, and learning mechanisms. Recognizing DID diagnostically does not mean that one full theory of its origins has been proven.
Neuroimaging findings do not establish a biological diagnostic test. A 2025 critical review of DID imaging studies identified limitations involving comorbidity, absence of suitable comparison groups, and interpretation. A 2024 behavioral and neurobiological study investigated memory across identity states in a small sample, illustrating the need for replication, preregistered predictions, and direct behavioral testing.
Dissociative amnesia and laboratory memory studies
Reports that certain memories are unavailable in a particular state are meaningful subjective experiences. They do not demonstrate that information cannot transfer between states under any laboratory condition. The 2024 evidence synthesis and 2025 commentary reached different interpretations of some analyses. Variation in tasks, tested memory domains, sample characteristics, and research methods limits confident generalization.
Recovered memories and suggestibility
Therapy can evoke recollections that feel powerful, but vividness, emotion, and confidence do not independently establish the historical accuracy of a memory. Recollection can be accurate, incomplete, reconstructed, or influenced by suggestion. Nor should uncertainty about a memory be taken as automatic proof that it is false. A 2024 survey of psychotherapists found that some clinicians had used techniques intended to recover presumed trauma memories, making safeguards against suggestive interviewing important.
Ethical practice avoids leading questions, pressuring a person to generate an abuse narrative, or claiming that diagnosis or hypnosis can prove unremembered events. Treatment focuses on present distress, functioning, safety, and collaboratively established goals. Historical fact-finding requires independent corroboration and standards different from those of clinical care.
DID Treatment: Current Evidence and Clinical Practice
Psychotherapy is the central treatment approach. Treatment planning accounts for safety, severity, co-occurring conditions, patient goals, and potential destabilization. The ISSTD adult guidelines describe a widely used phase-oriented clinical framework, but a specialist guideline is not equivalent to high-certainty randomized controlled evidence.
Stabilization and skills
Clinical work often begins with safety assessment, therapeutic alliance, understanding symptoms, emotion regulation, practical coping, sleep, and management of self-harm, substance use, depression, and anxiety when present. Clinicians may help patients develop more continuity and cooperation between dissociative experiences. Strategies need to be individualized, and progress assessed through daily functioning and safety, not merely through changes in the terminology used for identity states.
Trauma processing and longer-term rehabilitation
When a person has sufficient stability and chooses to address distressing memories, carefully paced trauma-related work may be appropriate. Techniques may incorporate cognitive methods, imagery approaches, and emotion-regulation skills. Subsequent goals can include better memory continuity, more stable relationships, improved daily autonomy, and reduced harmful behaviors. Identity integration or cooperation among self-states can be discussed as functional clinical goals without imposing one predetermined outcome or narrative.
What does the treatment research actually show?
A 2025 systematic review by Griffiths and colleagues screened more than 6,000 records and included 19 studies of DID or OSDD treatments. The included psychological interventions were associated with improvement in dissociation, general symptoms, and functioning. Study quality, comparator groups, samples, and intervention definitions varied, limiting certainty about the magnitude of benefits and the relative superiority of any single method. Association with improvement is not the same as proof of specific causal efficacy.
A 2025 review by Bachrach and Huntjens described encouraging results for newly adapted interventions and highlighted the need for well-designed comparative studies. Evidence from PTSD, BPD, or other populations does not automatically transfer to DID. At present, there is no universally established most effective treatment, guaranteed duration, or reliable individual cure rate.
Cognitive and behavioral methods
Elements of cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy skills, and trauma-focused interventions may be incorporated when relevant to the person's clinical formulation. Their evidence must be evaluated specifically in DID samples rather than inferred from successful trials in other diagnoses. A treatment plan should explain why a technique was selected, how benefits and adverse effects will be monitored, and when it will be adapted.
Medications and hypnosis
No medication is established for directly reversing DID's core identity discontinuity or dissociative amnesia. Clinicians may prescribe medications for independently evaluated depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, or other co-occurring conditions. The APA overview draws this distinction. Hypnosis appears in some specialty approaches but requires attention to informed consent, suggestibility, and clinical risk. Hypnosis cannot verify the accuracy of purportedly recovered memories.
Treatment risks and clinical monitoring
Clinicians should track self-injury, suicidality, dissociation, sleep, distress, daily functioning, attendance, and changes in behavior across care. Rapidly pushing trauma processing or prompting dramatic identity demonstrations can be destabilizing. Patients should be able to ask what alternative diagnoses were considered, what level of evidence supports treatment, which adverse effects are possible, and how the therapeutic plan changes when symptoms worsen.
Prognosis, Relationships, and Daily Life
The clinical course varies substantially. Some patients experience enduring problems with continuity or daily function; others make meaningful progress in safety, distress, self-understanding, relationships, and independence. Comorbidity, current stress, quality and accessibility of care, support, and physical health may affect the trajectory. Research does not support a fixed treatment timeline or universal recovery rate.
For a professional assessment, concrete observations are useful: memory gaps, functional problems, changes in awareness, medication and substance exposure, sleep, recent stress, and relevant medical events. A neutral symptom record avoids inferring causes or attempting to reconstruct unremembered trauma.
Some people find present-focused orientation helpful during detachment, such as identifying where they are, noticing the floor, checking the date, or contacting a trusted person. Condition-specific controlled evidence for these steps as standalone DID treatment is limited. If a technique increases distress, stop it and discuss options with a clinician.
Family and friends can listen respectfully, assist with routines when invited, and support safe access to professional care. Avoid pressuring a person to demonstrate switching, testing whether identity states are real, or treating every change of mood as a diagnosis. Discuss safety concerns and practical needs directly.
Prevalence: Why Single Percentages Need Context
DID prevalence estimates are strongly shaped by how participants are sampled and how a diagnosis is established. Community surveys, specialist clinics, psychiatric outpatient services, and forensic populations can yield different estimates. Screening scores must not be counted as clinical diagnoses; results from highly selected patient groups cannot represent the general population. Some frequently quoted U.S. figures trace to small studies or particular assessment methods. A prevalence estimate can be useful only when its source population, sampling and diagnostic procedure are specified. The Cleveland Clinic's clinical overview describes one historical estimate and explicitly notes uncertainty. This article avoids assigning a universal percentage to a heterogeneous evidence base.
Underrecognition and diagnostic misclassification are competing challenges. Symptom concealment, overlapping presentations, clinician knowledge, and prior exposure to a diagnosis may influence recognition. Conversely, a highly suggestive interview or a screening instrument applied without a medical differential can increase classification error. A valid clinical estimate requires methods able to address both problems.
A Practical Evidence Map: Which Claims Are Most Secure?
Established diagnostic framework: DSM-5-TR and ICD-11 both specify dissociative identity conditions and define clinical requirements. Well-supported measurement caution: screening instruments are not equivalent to a diagnostic interview, and instruments vary in their validity across groups. Supported treatment observation: individuals enrolled in DID/OSDD psychotherapy research often improve on reported clinical outcomes, as described in the 2025 treatment systematic review. Evidence remains insufficient to identify a universally superior protocol or an individual cure probability.
Contested or preliminary questions include the exact mechanisms of inter-identity memory transfer, a unique causal developmental pathway, proposed imaging biomarkers, and the relative effectiveness of treatment sequences. Findings about trauma exposure, neuroimaging, personality, and laboratory recall each answer a narrower question than whether a particular event occurred in one patient's past. This hierarchy guides how strongly a clinician or educational article should state a conclusion.
Choosing a Clinician and Evaluating a Treatment Plan
A person with recurring memory gaps or identity discontinuities can begin with a qualified mental-health clinician who is prepared to evaluate dissociative symptoms and rule out other disorders. Relevant expertise includes careful diagnostic interviewing, management of comorbidities, medical referral when indicated, awareness of cultural and developmental explanations, and an ability to discuss the limits of treatment evidence. A practitioner should be able to explain why DID is being considered, what findings favor alternatives, and what additional information would change the formulation.
Useful questions for a first consultation include: Which diagnostic criteria are present? Are the reported gaps beyond ordinary forgetting? Have sleep, substances, medications, neurological events, psychosis-spectrum symptoms, PTSD, and personality-related symptoms been assessed? Which measurement tools were used and what do they actually measure? What will count as improvement in safety, memory continuity, work, relationships, and distress? How will potential harm or worsening be recognized? These questions support collaborative care without turning the person into their own diagnostician.
Therapeutic fit also matters. A treatment approach should accommodate informed consent, privacy, clear boundaries, realistic expectations, accessible crisis planning, and the patient's own functional priorities. If a clinician insists that a specific remembered trauma must be uncovered or that an elaborate identity narrative is necessary, that claim deserves scrutiny because current evidence does not establish such requirements.
DID and Communication in Daily Settings
Disruptions in continuity can affect appointments, medication routines, finances, conversations, and work obligations. Individualized practical supports may include a shared calendar, agreed reminders, clear written information, a medication plan reviewed with a prescriber, and routines that reduce uncertainty without inviting others to police identity states. These strategies respond to concrete functional difficulty; they are not tests of whether a dissociative disorder exists.
Disclosure at work, school, or in relationships is a personal decision shaped by safety, confidentiality, and support needs. Someone seeking accommodations can describe specific difficulties with memory, appointments, or concentration rather than disclose a contested explanatory narrative. Families should avoid treating a reported memory gap as evidence of deceit or treating every inconsistency as proof of DID. Cooperative planning and professional assessment are better suited to uncertainty.
Children, Adolescents, and Culture
Assessing children requires developmental expertise. Fantasy play, imaginary companions, changes in mood, ADHD symptoms, stress responses, and sleep difficulties have many possible causes and are not independent evidence of DID. Clinical work should avoid suggestive questioning, consider family and school settings, and evaluate medical explanations.
Some possession or trance expressions occur within accepted religious or cultural practices. The APA and WHO ICD-11 CDDR make cultural context and clinical significance important to differential diagnosis. A cultural practice is not a disorder merely because it involves an unfamiliar state of identity or consciousness.
Urgent Safety: When to Seek Immediate Help
A new seizure, loss of consciousness, head injury, suspected intoxication, sudden severe confusion, or neurological deterioration warrants urgent medical evaluation. If someone faces immediate danger or has suicidal intent with inability to remain safe, contact local emergency services. In the United States, call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. These situations require evaluation of the immediate risk, not a presumption of DID.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is DID a recognized diagnosis?
Yes. DID is recognized in DSM-5-TR and ICD-11. Its diagnostic status does not resolve every scientific controversy about etiology, objective memory barriers, or treatment effectiveness. Clinicians should address distress with careful evidence-based assessment.
Does someone need to switch visibly to have DID?
No. Some changes are subtle or primarily internal. A dramatic switch alone also cannot establish DID. Identity discontinuity, recurrent abnormal amnesia, distress or impairment, and alternative explanations are considered together.
How many alters or identities are required?
Diagnostic criteria involve two or more distinguishable states, without a fixed number beyond that threshold. Counting named states is not a measure of severity or a substitute for assessment.
Can you have DID without remembering childhood trauma?
A specific remembered trauma narrative is not a diagnostic requirement. Memory gaps do not prove hidden events, and an assessment must not treat DID as a way of verifying presumed abuse.
Is DID the same as schizophrenia?
No. The classifications are different, even though voices and other experiences can overlap. A clinician examines identity, memory, psychotic symptoms, course, and medical contributors.
Is OSDD the same as partial DID?
No. DSM OSDD and ICD-11 partial DID are organized under different diagnostic rules and are not automatically interchangeable.
Can DES-II or a website quiz diagnose DID?
No. These can measure or screen for experiences but cannot evaluate full diagnostic criteria, context, impairment, culture, and medical differentials. Qualified clinical assessment is necessary.
Are people with DID dangerous?
A diagnosis does not justify assumptions about harm toward others. Safety decisions depend on actual circumstances and behavior. Some clinical populations experience elevated self-harm concerns, requiring individualized support.
Can DID be treated successfully?
Psychotherapy may help improve distress, safety, memory continuity, functioning, and relationships. The current evidence remains too heterogeneous for a universal best method, fixed recovery time, or reliable cure percentage.
Can hypnosis prove a recovered memory is true?
No. A vivid memory may be important to the person but is not independent historical verification. Memory can be influenced by suggestion and reconstruction, requiring cautious ethical practice.
What should I bring to an appointment?
Bring specific examples of missing time, memory gaps, changes in awareness or agency, daily consequences, sleep, medicines, substance exposure, and relevant medical history. Ask how differential diagnoses will be assessed and how care outcomes will be monitored.
Related Articles
Childhood Trauma and Dissociation: What Is the Connection? — trauma-related association, mechanisms, and evidence limitations.
Trauma and Memory: Intrusive Memories, Gaps, and Evidence — the clinical and research interpretation of memory changes.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Symptoms, Diagnosis, and Treatment — PTSD diagnosis and the dissociative subtype.
Neurosis vs Dissociation: Historical Concepts and Modern Diagnostic Categories — historical terminology and modern classification.
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed., text rev.). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787
American Psychiatric Association. (2024). What are dissociative disorders? https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/dissociative-disorders/what-are-dissociative-disorders
Bachrach, N., & Huntjens, R. J. C. (2025). Recent evidence-based developments in the treatment of DID. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 16, 1650164. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1650164
Beker, J. C., Dorahy, M. J., Moir, J., & Cording, J. (2024). Inter-identity amnesia and memory transfer in dissociative identity disorder: A systematic review with a meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 114, 102514. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2024.102514
Dimitrova, L. I., et al. (2024). Inter-identity amnesia in dissociative identity disorder resolved: A behavioural and neurobiological study. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 174, 220–229. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2024.04.026
Donath, W., et al. (2025). Does meta-analytic evidence support inter-identity amnesia in dissociative identity disorder? Clinical Psychology Review, 121, 102638. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2025.102638
Dorahy, M. J., et al. (2023). A comparison between auditory hallucinations, interpretation of voices, and formal thought disorder in dissociative identity disorder and schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 79, 2009–2022. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23522
Garofalo, C., et al. (2026). The conceptualization and assessment of dissociation: An umbrella review of synthesis studies. Clinical Psychology Review, 124, 102702. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2026.102702
Griffiths, T. A., Dimitrova, L. I., Linington, M., Terhune, D. B., & Reinders, A. A. T. S. (2025). Effectiveness of phase-oriented treatment for trauma-related dissociative disorders: A systematic review. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 16, 2545734. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008066.2025.2545734
International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. (2011). Guidelines for treating dissociative identity disorder in adults, third revision. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 12, 115–187. https://doi.org/10.1080/15299732.2011.537247
Merck Manual Professional Edition. Dissociative identity disorder. https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/psychiatric-disorders/dissociative-disorders/dissociative-identity-disorder
Mychailyszyn, M. P., et al. (2021). Differentiating dissociative from non-dissociative disorders: A meta-analysis of the SCID-D. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 22, 19–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/15299732.2020.1760169
Schemmel, J., Datschewski-Verch, L., & Volbert, R. (2024). Recovered memories in psychotherapy: A survey of practicing psychotherapists in Germany. Memory, 32(2), 176–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2024.2305870
Schlesselmann, A., Pijnenborg, M., Wessel, I., de Vries, V., & Huntjens, R. J. C. (2026). A critical review of methodological quality in functional neuroimaging studies on dissociative identity disorder. Memory, 34(1), 113–127. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2025.2587233
Wainipitapong, S., et al. (2025). Assessing dissociation: A systematic review and evaluation of existing measures. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 181, 91–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2024.11.040
World Health Organization. (2024). Clinical descriptions and diagnostic requirements for ICD-11 mental, behavioural and neurodevelopmental disorders. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240077263