Is it possible for someone with split personalities, to have schizophrenia in one of the personalities.?

Answer 1

Many people believe, falsely, that having a 'split personality' is the same as schizophrenia. Well, it is not. There are, in fact, important differences.

The term schizophrenia is from Bleuler (1911), who firstly identified more and milder varieties of the disease. He spoke of a Gruppe der Schizophrenien (group of schizophrenics). Schizophrenia means 'split mind'... which goes some way to explaining the present confusion.
.Schizophrenia is the label applied to a group of disorders characterized by severe personality disorganization, distortion of reality, and an inability to function in daily life1.
Typical symptoms of schizophrenia include hallucinations, mostly visual and auditory. To try to interpret these very realistic hallucinations, the sufferer develops delusions. A common delusion is that a schizophrenic may think he has a magic power or that he is God. This is a psychotic state. A psychosis affects the brain and damages it.

Disorders in emotional perception, movement (stiff movements, for example) and problems with speech (such as abruptly stopping in the middle of a sentence and starting another), may make the sufferer look bizarre to others.

The most common form is paranoid schizophrenia. This is where the sufferer's thoughts are controlled by strong suspicious delusions, and auditory hallucinations, such as 'hearing voices' which is very common. In comparison with other forms of schizophrenia, the disorders of emotional perception, movement and speech are rather small.

The development of schizophrenia often starts during adolescence or young adulthood. It is believed that it is caused by genetic defects triggered by stress factors like depression, the death of a dear person, or other experiences that are hard to cope with.

The prognosis of schizophrenia is bad when the disease has developed slowly; when there were no significant factors to trigger it; when it started to develop early; and when there are more family members suffering from schizophrenia. Treatment includes the taking of medications to suppress psychosis and joining psychotherapy. During non-psychotic episodes the sufferer has to learn to live with the symptoms and to avoid the possible triggers which prompt the psychosis; such as pressure, unstable and unhealthy lifestyle, stress and insecure feelings.

A split personality has nothing to do with schizophrenia, but more with Multiple Personality Syndrome (MPS). This is a psychiatric disorder that causes the sufferer's personality to divide into sub personalities, also known as alters. The alters have their own memory, and don't know of each other's existence. Consequently, the sufferer has episodes of amnesia.

The development of MPS is almost always triggered by severe abuse, including sexual abuse. During the traumatic experience the person becomes dissociated from the experience, becomes 'not there', and an alter personality takes over the pain. For every traumatic experience an alter is created. The alternating of the alters is easily recognized by the changing of the voice of the sufferer.

MPS is one of the most severe forms of defence mechanisms used to cope with extremely traumatic experiences.

Since 1994, MPS has been officially classified as Dissociative Identity Disorder in the DSM-IV2 as the alters are more identities, rather than personalities, based on dissociations.

As MPS (or DID) is believed to be very rare, not much research has been done. Therefore, not much is known of the prognosis. It is considered that the later the development of the alters takes place, the better. Another outcome of research is the belief that:

... after the age of 50, the alternating of the alters would spontaneously reduce3.
The experience gained by research is that sufferers who had re-integrated alters have a better recovery rate than sufferers with still divided alters. The integration of the alters is always accomplished by many years of intensive psychotherapy.
I believe yes.

Answer 2

No clue but i read a very good book on MPS it is called twilight children by tory hayden. The story is about a real girl who's parents are divorced and one day after school her dad kidnaps her. Her Dad told her to believe one thing and when she returned home her mom told her to believe another thing. So she gained a completly different person. At first no one noticed but than her therapist, Torey Hayden, discovered her using different terms at different times. Like when she had to go to the bathroom sometimes she would say i have to go "wee" and other times she would say i have to go "pee" after a while she picked up a few more of theses terms and figured out she had 2 completly different minds going on it was a great book you should read it

Answer 3

schizophrenia is a completely different the split personalities (disociative disorder). If someone had schizophrenia as well it would effect them completely because it is a chemical embalance in the brain.

Answer 4

Of course it is. Why are you asking this anyway? Do you have personal experience??

Answer 5

Should be possible

Answer 6

I suppose anything is possible.

Answer 7

it seems possible but very unlikely.

Answer 8

why not