“It's not like you have PSTD with a touch of dissociation”: Understanding dissociative identity disorder through first person accounts

The participants' accounts indicate that their alter parts have specific life times and as such some younger parts are often not aware of key life events or strengths of the adult parts. Most of the participants reported benefiting from psychological or psychiatric support at times, although experienced many relational challenges and struggled to articulate important information about their unique conditions during times of crisis, which was often when participants were invited to share information. Eight recommendations for practitioners emerged from the analysis.