Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adolescents: Teenage Dissociative Disorders & Support Options
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) in adolescents is a rare yet serious mental health condition. You may have heard it previously referred to as “multiple personality disorder.” However, the use of this term stopped being used professionally in 1994, as it implies that DID is a personality disorder rather than a sense of fragmented identity.
DID is often rooted in early childhood trauma and can cause challenges in identity, memory, and awareness. As a result of these challenges, many teenagers can feel confused, detached from reality, a loss of control, or like an entirely different person.
Whilst it may be frightening for all involved, teen mental health dissociation is treatable with the right professional support. Plus, this page can help you better understand DID in adolescents, which is often the first step in helping a teen heal. It covers:
- What DID in adolescents is
- Common symptoms of teenage dissociative disorders
- Causes of teenage DID
- How DID is diagnosed in adolescents
- Effective treatment options for DID
- When to consider residential care for your teen
- How to find professional support
What Is DID in Adolescents?
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) in teens, formerly known as teenage multiple personality disorder, is a mental health condition in which someone experiences two or more separate personalities. These personalities or identities function independently of each other, meaning they may each have entirely unique behaviors and memories distinct from each other. These separate identities are typically known as “alters.”
DID is a serious condition that is thought to affect up to two in every hundred people.1 It is often diagnosed later in life, but can also present in teenagers – it’s just sometimes more difficult to diagnose in this age group. This is because adolescence is a time of considerable change in terms of emotions and identity exploration, making symptom recognition slightly more challenging. However, one key difference between typical teenage identity exploration and the dissociative identity disorder teens may develop is that DID is more disruptive than “normal” teenage identity discovery.
Sometimes, people still use the term multiple personality disorder colloquially. However, this term doesn’t accurately describe the mental health dissociation teens with DID live with. Instead, dissociative identity disorder more accurately reflects the fact that, rather than there being many different personalities, there was a single identity that is now more fragmented.
As may be evident, DID can be complex, so an awareness of the symptoms of DID could help you better understand DID in adolescents. The next section covers these signs.
DID Symptoms in Youth
To recap, separate identities or alters may have distinct characteristics that function independently of each other. And, to further complicate the issue, several symptoms from totally distinct identity states may either overlap with or be mistaken for other mental health issues. For example, borderline personality disorder, depression, psychosis, or schizophrenia.2
However, the main factor separating DID from other mental health conditions is the presence of different personalities that may each take control at various times. The following are other signs of DID.
Common Signs of DID:
Some of the most common symptoms of DID to watch for may include:2
Existence of at least two distinct personalities- Each personality varying in terms of behavior, memory, sense of consciousness, and views of the outside world
- Experiencing amnesia or discrete gaps in memory
- Symptoms causing problems with daily functioning
To break these symptoms down further, regarding what you might see in a teen’s behavior, your child may:
Appear to suddenly change their behavior, have their mood shift quickly, or even seem like a different person in terms of how they speak or what they enjoy doing- Forget important information, special events, or appear to have forgotten entire conversations
- Say they feel disconnected from themselves, their surroundings, or reality
- Lose time in the sense that they can’t remember what they were just doing, or how they got from one place to another. This is different from when a person may go from one place to another “on autopilot”, forgetting the details of a journey they often travel. Instead, someone with DID may genuinely have no recollection of how they arrived somewhere.
These symptoms are often a response to unresolved trauma and can, understandably, be scary for both teens experiencing DID and their parents. The causes of DID are further explored in the next section.
Causes of DID in Adolescents
For example, it can develop if the home the child lived in was frightening, for example, in the case of disorganized attachment or living in areas of war.2,4 Plus, research suggests that more severe cases are typically linked to very early, chronic abuse, often from a parent or main caregiver.5
Dissociation is the mind’s way of protecting you from trauma: it allows you to distance or detach yourself from what is happening in that moment. However, dissociation can range from mild to severe.
If dissociation is the coping mechanism for someone experiencing early childhood trauma, this coping mechanism may continue into adolescence and beyond, developing into dissociative identity disorder.
In DID, dissociation tends to become more severe, leading to other distinct identities developing that can hold the traumatic memories or experiences. It may help to think of it as a coping mechanism that someone may have no control over, or is potentially even unaware of.
How DID Is Diagnosed in Teens
If what you’ve read so far about DID in adolescents has struck a chord, you may want to consider seeking a professional assessment or diagnosis. But what does this process involve?
For a diagnosis of DID, teens will need to have an assessment by a healthcare provider, such as a psychologist or psychiatrist. Usually, this assessment will involve taking a detailed history of your teen and their specific symptoms. Therefore, the healthcare professional may want to talk to the teen’s family, as they are often the ones who encounter or interact with potential “alter” identities.
There may also be self-report questionnaires involved, and additional investigations may take place to rule out other conditions that could be causing your teen’s symptoms. Using all the information gathered, the assessor can have a full, well-rounded view of the teen and their symptoms from which they can make an accurate diagnosis.
When looking for a diagnosis, it’s important to remember that DID often stems from trauma. For this reason, the professional help DID teens require needs to be trauma-informed, so that people involved in the care and assessment can support them appropriately.
This trauma-informed approach is vital in treatment as well as during diagnosis. The following section will explore the suitable treatment options available for teens with DID.
Treatment and Therapy for DID Young Adults
Often, there are three phases to treating DID, including:2
Establishing safety, stabilization, and symptom reduction: Many patients with DID may present with self-harm or suicidal ideation, so it’s important to help them stabilize and feel safe before they begin exploring their trauma.6- Confronting, working through, and integrating traumatic memories: This element often focuses on accessing traumatic memories through the teen’s different identities to help them process and work through their trauma.
- Identity reintegration: Merging the distinct identities into a single personality once more.
Therapeutic Options for DID Treatment:
Therapy approaches that tend to be most beneficial for adolescents with DID are those that allow them to work through their past trauma. Additionally, therapies that enable someone to better manage sudden behavioral changes can be especially helpful for daily functioning.
The therapeutic approaches that may help a teen work toward these outcomes include:2
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT): DBT can teach teens the skills necessary to help control some of their symptoms, which is vital for building safety, managing distress, and stabilization.7- Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT): TF-CBT is useful for addressing trauma-related symptoms. It focuses on education, developing coping skills, and gradual trauma processing.8
- Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR): EMDR allows patients to process past trauma and fragmented memories without necessarily needing to recount the details.9
Medication for DID in Teens
Medication is not the first line of treatment for dissociative disorders. However, medication may prove useful in controlling other mental health conditions alongside DID, for instance, depression, anxiety, or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
One complication can arise, though: whether medication is taken consistently. Due to the nature of DID, it may be the case that only one personality knows they have been prescribed medication to take. Therefore, medication may not always be taken as intended if other identities are present at the usual medication time. This could decrease the effectiveness of medication in alleviating any mood-related symptoms.10
When to Consider Residential Treatment
Sometimes, outpatient therapy may not provide enough support for teens with DID. If your teen poses a risk to themself through self-harm or suicidal thoughts, or hasn’t made the progress they hoped for, a residential (inpatient) treatment option may be more appropriate. It is also a useful option to consider if a teen’s daily environment at home or school doesn’t provide the right conditions for their recovery from distressing symptoms.
In residential treatment DID teenagers can receive the care and attention they need 24/7, including therapeutic support. Residential programs also provide opportunities for teens to learn new skills, understand their condition better, discover ways to manage symptoms, and receive guidance from mental health experts. It is a more intensive option than outpatient therapy when coping with DID in teens, where a teen knows that they can focus solely on recovery without any other distractions.
However, there are many settings for dissociation treatment adolescents respond well to, and residential is just one of them. Other options include weekly therapy, virtual therapy, and intensive outpatient therapy. It’s important to choose an option that you feel meets your teen’s needs and fits into their schedule. With the right support, healing is possible.
Helping Teens Heal From Dissociative Identity Disorder at Mission Prep
If you are concerned your teen may be struggling with dissociative identity disorder, know that you’re not alone. DID can feel overwhelming, but with the right support, many teens can go on to lead stable and fulfilling lives.
At Mission Prep, our team of mental health experts offers personalized DID treatment for teenagers. We understand how dissociation can affect teens, and offer evidence-based therapies and trauma-informed care to help them heal, as well as support for the whole family.
If you are ready to take the next step forward, contact us today to find out how we can help your teen live a more fulfilling life.
References
- Dissociative Identity Disorder Research. (n.d.). Dissociative Identity Disorder Prevalence. DID-Research.org. Retrieved September 16, 2025, from https://did-research.org/did/basics/prevalence
- Mitra, P., & Jain, A. (2023, May 16). Dissociative Identity Disorder. StatPearls – NCBI Bookshelf. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK568768/
- Cleveland Clinic. (2025, August 4). Dissociative Identity Disorder. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9792-dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder#overview
- Mayo Clinic. (n.d.). Dissociative disorders – Symptoms and causes. Retrieved September 16, 2025, from https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/dissociative-disorders/symptoms-causes/syc-20355215
- Sar, V., Dorahy, M., & Krüger, C. (2017). Revisiting the etiological aspects of dissociative identity disorder: a biopsychosocial perspective. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, Volume 10, 137–146. https://doi.org/10.2147/prbm.s113743
- Foote, B., Smolin, Y., Neft, D. I., & Lipschitz, D. (2008). Dissociative disorders and suicidality in psychiatric outpatients. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 196(1), 29–36. https://doi.org/10.1097/nmd.0b013e31815fa4e7
- Foote, B., & Van Orden, K. (2016). Adapting Dialectical Behavior therapy for the treatment of dissociative identity Disorder. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 70(4), 343–364. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.2016.70.4.343
- Vancappel, A., Reveillere, C., El-Hage, W. (2022). Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) for dissociative subtype PTSD: A case study. European Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 6(4), 100290. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejtd.2022.100290
- Twombly, J. H. (2000). Incorporating EMDR and EMDR Adaptations into the Treatment of Clients with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 1(2), 61–81. https://doi.org/10.1300/j229v01n02_05
- TraumaDissociation.com. (2025, September 16). Dissociative Identity Disorder. https://traumadissociation.com/dissociativeidentitydisorder#treatment
