EFFECTIVENESS OF TREATMENT FOR DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER

In a recent study by Ellason and Rose, patients with Dissociative Iden tity Disorder reported a decrease in symptoms on the Millon Clinical M ultiaxial Inventory-II over a 2-yr, follow-up period. Patients judged to have achieved integration of their personalities rated themselves a s more substantially improved on the Milion-II than did patients judge d not to have achieved integration. Ellason and Ross suggested that th is improvement reflected the influence of treatment; however, for seve ral reasons, their findings are open to alternative interpretations. F irst, in the absence of proper control conditions, one cannot rule out the contribution of other factors to the over-all improvement of pati ents such as regression of symptoms toward the mean following the init ial assessment. Second, patients' self-reported improvement was less s ubstantial when data were reanalyzed using more appropriate statistica l criteria. Third, the greater improvement observed among integrated p atients relative to nonintegrated patients may reflect influences othe r than differential responsiveness to treatment, such as less severe p athology prior to treatment. More systematic research is needed to cla rify the effect of treatment on Dissociative Identity Disorder.