Why aren't there many specialists?

I have a T I am seeing but I have only been once and I dont think she treats this. She did have an odd look a couple of times when I was trying to describe things and kept saying "i dont remember. Oh wait, no, wait maybe. I dont know" & she had a lot of ptsd books in her office so maybe shes not totally clueless.

Anyhow my question is that I don't seem to find a lot of specialist treating this either in actual searches or just in passive reading. Am I just mistaken and there are or do professionals normally shy away from specializing in this?

Not looking for advice to hire one yet, just noticed it and thought it was an interesting topic.

I can only speak for my country and what I have seen here.
here the answer is very simple: there are easier ways to earn their money. a lot easier.
special training costs money. usually they ask Ts to train as trauma T first, then add DID to it.
that means having to deal with an extremely complex patient AND insane trauma history.
there are easier ways to earn your money.
we face the same for BPD, there is a great lack in trained Ts there as well. its not rare, but successes are slow and its difficult.

I agree with birdsong. Also, not many medical professionals believe DID actually exist, so not many specialize in it.

I'm a psych student, and I can say that in France, the lack of dissociative disorder specialists is because they don't even know it exist or don't know really what it is.
And worst, most of the students aren't able to read english fluently enough to make reaserches on their own. That's still surprise me... all the studies are in english, how do they think they will be able to stay up-on-date if they can't read it ?...

I had to do a presentation about nevrosis in October, I wanted to end with the dissociative disorders, but before I could say anything about it, the prof stopped me and said : "It's a tricky subject, because of dissociation, it's really close to psychosis, I don't want you to confuse the others so stop here".
I was like "WHAT ?!" then I realized she was confusing "dissociation from the self" with "dissociation from the reality". And even if I'm more comfortable socially speaking, my anxiety is still strong enough to block me from saying anything against her in front of 30 students.
But I came back to her few days later to talk about her about dissociation in dissociative disorders and dissociation in psychosis, and I think my questions confused her beliefs enough to make her search about it

The only time we heard about DID, it's when a psychanalist teatcher came to talk about her view of trauma. She talked about false memories and how the "DID fashion" leaded many people into jail. That's all.
All my system was angry to see her devaluating DID in front of 200 students, we shared the link of the forum where I translate things about dissociative disorders on the Facebook page of my class.

When I talk with other french DID/OSDD people, either psych students or not, that's what we all saw : people don't know DID exist, or have so many false ideas about it, they don't take time to learn what it is for real. Some don't even know about dissociation, and some of them are dissociative too and think everyone is like this (my last psychiatrist thought that).
That why I wanted to translate things about dissociative disorders in french. Even if only 10 people read it, it will be 10 people more aware of it in the country.

We think alot of it is as Dwelt said its not something that most healthcare professionals are taught about because I read that from a few sources. Also there are studies that invalidate DID as a diagnosis.


The link is triggering. There is an example of a paitent to pretend doesn't and then a review of research into DID it references 43 studies between 1980 and 2009. It includes references to the causes and also includes that both support and disprove DID
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2719457/

I feel like if its a controversial diagnosis of course it won't be taught but then it will never stop being one because it will never truly understood because the subject is avoid to much

Dwelt wrote:I'm a psych student, and I can say that in France, the lack of dissociative disorder specialists is because they don't even know it exist or don't know really what it is.
And worst, most of the students aren't able to read english fluently enough to make reaserches on their own. That's still surprise me... all the studies are in english, how do they think they will be able to stay up-on-date if they can't read it ?...

I had to do a presentation about nevrosis in October, I wanted to end with the dissociative disorders, but before I could say anything about it, the prof stopped me and said : "It's a tricky subject, because of dissociation, it's really close to psychosis, I don't want you to confuse the others so stop here".
I was like "WHAT ?!" then I realized she was confusing "dissociation from the self" with "dissociation from the reality". And even if I'm more comfortable socially speaking, my anxiety is still strong enough to block me from saying anything against her in front of 30 students.
But I came back to her few days later to talk about her about dissociation in dissociative disorders and dissociation in psychosis, and I think my questions confused her beliefs enough to make her search about it

The only time we heard about DID, it's when a psychanalist teatcher came to talk about her view of trauma. She talked about false memories and how the "DID fashion" leaded many people into jail. That's all.
All my system was angry to see her devaluating DID in front of 200 students, we shared the link of the forum where I translate things about dissociative disorders on the Facebook page of my class.

When I talk with other french DID/OSDD people, either psych students or not, that's what we all saw : people don't know DID exist, or have so many false ideas about it, they don't take time to learn what it is for real. Some don't even know about dissociation, and some of them are dissociative too and think everyone is like this (my last psychiatrist thought that).
That why I wanted to translate things about dissociative disorders in french. Even if only 10 people read it, it will be 10 people more aware of it in the country.

In France.. That's awful!

I agree the dissociative disorders often are skipped over in training courses. I have read clinical psychology textbooks that don't mention dissociation in any way. Others describe dissociative symptoms in great detail but never use any of the technical words for them, as if the authors don't know those words. But slowly this is changing. One way we as individuals can help change happen is to write reader reviews of books that lack content, mentioning that this important class of symptoms is absent from the book. Or write a civil, clear, brief note to the author of any book or article presenting the differential diagnosis of schizophrenia, noting that DID was overlooked.

Dwelt, about French language content, have you considered Wikipedia? The French Wikipedia page about depersonalization gets hundreds of views per day: page view statistics

NyxX : Thank you for the link ! I was searching studies that tries to invalide DID for a while and never found this.

Efragment : I think it's the same in a lot of countries, I know it well for France because I live and study psychology here, but from what I've heard around the Internet, it's not really different in other countries.
It really depends of the teatchers, and most of them are either ignorant or sceptical about DID.

Una : I've thought about this before doing my forum, but I wasn't comfortable about it. But now... that could be an idea. I know some other dissociative psych students who would be happy to help me to improve those pages.

@Dwelt, we are ready and proud to help you after exams haha

To translate or start an information campaign....
We could try with the new Swiss association we talked about.
A Frenchy campaign, with Belgium, Swiss and Canadians? There is the Journal de Victimologie from Quebec (where I got me PTSD formation) that would be able to help? My own association could help too!

Wiki to start the theoral content to make it accessible then we will see the next step

Alice

Hiyas All

I think there are more than a few reasons why there are not more "Specialists for DID". I think everyone covered some of them already.

I grew up very very close to the famous "McMarten Preschool" at the time that whole fiasco went down and was not only big news in Southern California, but especially locally since we mostly knew of at least one person whose kid went there at one time. The entire "False Memory" backlash from it still ripples and will for quite some time.

Also the fact that they simply still don't even do more than a quick mention of simple trauma in University Text Books on "Abnormal Psychology" here in the United States regardless of the laws pertaining to being "Trauma Informed" compliant here in Oregon where it is a mandatory Requirement for all state workers in Mental Health and Addictions programs as well as for ALL state licensing. We have one of the nation's best laws pertaining to Complex trauma and yet is useless since no one even knows it exists and is not enforced.

When I was cold calling Every single Psychiatrist, Psychologist, Social Worker and Counselor in my region that took Medicaid and Medicare. I was shocked at just how many "Trauma Specialists" listed flat out told me that "Multiple Personality Disorder" is so rare that the chances of ever having a client with it is almost none in an entire career!". My first "T" was a working Psychologist who later listed herself as a "Specialist in Dissociative Disorders" and yet she openly admitted to me that she didn't know how to assess for PTSD and 4 months later, she still couldn't do it. She had been a Psychologist for over 30 years at that time and was talking to me about retirement as soon as I met her.

I just discovered today that I got distracted last night while writing this by the news of Dr Bessel Van der Kolk being fired as medical director at his Trauma Center in Boston last January. The reasons they fired him "Justice Restorative Institute aka JRI) was because they claim some employee's said he was a bully and intimidating. But there were no actual charges nor any one coming forward. I suspect it has more to do with the 2.5 million dollars that belonged to the Trauma Center from donations and JRI wanted it badly.

As "Squirrel" like distracting as this may seem, it actually ties in with this very topic as to why there are very few specialists for Dissociation.

Dr Joseph Spinazzolla was fired a month before and his work specifically focused on Dissociative coping skills of traumatized children. Dr Frank Putman who was also a pioneer in Dissociation and DID and too was "Fired" or had all research funding cut off due to his work as well. History repeats it's patterns towards trying to bury "Trauma and Dissociation". It's too horrible to acknowledge as so is always a target. Funding for Children is always the first thing to be cut from budgets.

As to the allegations of Bessel being a "Bully", He is from the Netherlands which has been said that they are well known for being very bluntly honest and speak their minds without mincing words. Many suspect that besides the 2.5 million that JRI stole from his Trauma Center that he collected in donations, that his cultural expressions are mistaken for "Bullying" which is far from the truth. He is very opinionated as he is one of the world's experts on Trauma and Dissociation. He also has a serious childhood trauma history of his own. He is one of us. Although I have seen him during last year's Trauma Conference be quite rude and insensitive to an audience member having a seizure and the audience wanted to stop his lecture and help the women, (I was also having a seizure at the same time but was ignored lol). The members of the audience were even shouting at him that he was "Traumatizing" them for being so rude about getting the women out of the hall so he could continue his lecture. But after spending those 4 days at the conference with him and spoke with him often enough that he always spoke to me by my first name, I can say that from my personal experience, he is a very kind, gentle and compassionate person who has fought hard for all of us. His Peers came out in droves to defend him and openly called those charges ridiculous.

In a interview between him and Dr Frank Putman who was dying from Cancer at this time last year, the two started to discuss the retaliation by the system for studying childhood abuse and Trauma. But Frank Putman cut it short and wanted to avoid the topic as I suspect he didn't want those statements to tarnish his legacy after he was gone. But it was clear and undeniable that he too has been a serious target for his work and that stuff really happens even to the world's best experts.

Anyway I will post this now and move on.

Disheartened
Lumpy