Check in: Time to diagnosis?

So, aside from being forced to briefly see a church counselor as a teen, the first time I saw a mental health professional was in spring of 2015. My current T, who has something like 20 years working with people with dissociation and did goes back and forth between DID and OSDD. Neither of us are all that certain. That being said I did an eval with her and as of... well crap I can't remember if it was last month or november, anyway I guess a year and a half before getting a diagnosis of a severe dissociative disorder. However, I was lucky in that I had a friend I saw infrequently who was open about having DID and it was through talking with her that I even started suspecting that that could be it, and sought help. So a year and a half with some outside help.

Amanda @Amanda120575, OhNoNotAgain, estuary: thank you all for contributing your data points. Everyone's data has value. And the attendant stories are fascinating.

Estuary, I skimmed through your old posts and it looks like you had a classic "window of diagnosability" when you were a teen. Similar story here. Possibly I could have been diagnosed and helped any time from my teens onward if I had ever seen the DES. Oh well. When it happened was not a bad time for me. Anyway, as you began therapy in Spring 2015 and were still being evaluated in January (for PNES vs epilepsy) I'll put you down for 2015 to 2017, 2 years.

So far I have 23 responses. Please keep them coming! The smallest comparable series in print is over 70.

Una+
Just posting this because you asked on this topic in an e-mail to us.
In our early teen was given a DX of Seizure disorders but Doctors could not define what type of seizures we were having.
We knew we were DID for 35 years at least. We were put in a mental institution for nearly a year in are early 20's but never let the cat out of the bag and no one,much less our Doctor, was the wiser which is typical for most with DID, we cover up and hide our DID real well. They gave us a DX of schizoaffective disorder. Then in mid- 30's we got a DX of having an encoding/ decoding disorder. We were finally DX officially DID in 2013 by three Clinical Psychiatrist independent of each other.
We did get treated for DID through 2015 into mid 2016 and now live openly DID. For us the time has long passed for integration and will live the rest of our remaining life openly DID. No more hiding! Una+ we truly believe the hiding of our DID was almost as damaging as the DID it's self.
Regards
watcher AKA watcheroflights

Una+ ...I had symptoms of did in 2013 of Oct. Then in January 2014 got the dx of did. Been struggling with it for four years now, since me four others integrated. All I have is a persecutors alter that wants me dead.

Una+, I definitely had a window of diagnosability when I was a teenager. However, because I was both terrified that seeing a psyche doc would get me locked up and medicated, and was certain that my father would assume that I was undergoing some sort of 'spiritual battle for my immortal soul' with the devil, I stayed pretty tight lipped about the whole thing. With the exception of a few friends that I don't think believed me at the time.

Thanks for putting this survey together! Would it be helpful for me to ask a friend of mine who isn't on this forum also, or does the info need to come from the person themselves?

Una+
Just posting this because you asked on this topic in an e-mail to us.
In our early teen's was given a DX of Seizure disorders but Doctors could not define what type of seizures we were having.
We knew we were DID for 35 years at least. We were put in a mental institution for nearly a year in are early 20's but never let the cat out of the bag and no one,much less our Doctor' was the wiser which is typical for most with DID, we cover up and hide our DID real well. They gave us a DX of schizoaffective disorder. Then in mid- 30's we got a DX of having an encoding/ decoding disorder. We were finally DX officially DID in 2013 by three Clinical Psychiatrist independent of each other.
We did get treated for DID through 2015 into mid 2016 and now live openly DID. For us the time has long passed for integration and will live the rest of our remaining life openly DID. No more hiding! Una+ we truly believe the hiding of our DID was almost as damaging as the DID it's self.
Regards
watcher AKA watcheroflights

panther99, just to be clear, are you saying your first contact with mental health professionals was in October 2013?

estuary, please invite your friend to post their data themselves.

watcher (watcheroflights), what year were you first seen for the seizures (PNES)? I would count that as your starting point for time to diagnosis. I agree about the hiding and the coming out. Good for you!

Una+
Seizures DX around 1971/1972 but we do remember being sent for testing in the late 1960's by the school district we lived in which was around the complaint of our teach that we space out a lot and went off into a world of our own and was failing in school. Do not know what our parents were told about the out comes of the testing but our parents did not believe in mental health issues or disabilities so would have not acted on what every they were told. The male parent attitude was beat the crap out of us that will fix the problem, that will teach them to learn which it never did. So if we go back to that time period 1968/1969 best guess but pretty much childhood is broken in time,events and mostly what is remember seen in third person.
Regards
watcher AKA watcheroflights

2014 is when a mental health professional told me I had it, it was whilst we were in Marine Corps boot camp. The psychologist said I had DID and GID but she didn't mark it on record because she didn't want me to be kicked out of the marines, she talked to us about ourselves a bit and realized that we were very stable, but she said that when I got out I needed to go get therapy, which I don't think so, just because we've always been a system sense as far back as we can remember, and as for most of our childhood accourding to our mother. It's not usually a problem...
Our mother said Steve and Ace have been around sense I was nine, but I remember them from as far back as five. She told me that I she was yelling at me when I was 8 and screamed my birth name at me and I yelled "F*ck you I'm Steve!" At her. That, as well as a bunch of $#%^ she said Steve did that I don't remember. We've had it sense forever pretty much, so my mother has always just known, without knowing what to call it. I mean hell, she calls us her boys, and asks how her boys are doing sometimes.

watcher: Thanks! I make your T0 1968. There used to be an assumption that seizure = epilepsy. In the last 20 years there has been a flood of articles from epilepsy specialty clinics about diagnosing PNES. So now in the UK today a lot of older persons with DID are being diagnosed by neurologists!

ThatPerson: I have you down as T0 2014 and time to diagnosis as 0. You were posting here back in early 2013, figuring it all out for yourself. Hooray for the DID Forum!