If any of you have recently seen the new 2017 movie Split, you know that the main villain has 23 personality disorders. However, there is one personality that is hidden from all the others, a 24th personality known as "The Beast."
Although Split was a fictional thriller and horror movie, it can be possible for people to actually get this dreadful disease which is known as dissociative identity disorder (DID).
According to WebMD, DID is believed to be caused by "a complex psychological condition that is likely caused by many factors, including severe trauma during early childhood."
The villain that has DID, Kevin was abused by his mother as a child. He had none of the other personalities until he experienced that severe trauma and ever since then Kevin's personalities just wanted to "protect him" as they say to the trusted psychiatrist, known as Dr. Fletcher, in the film.
Despite the fact that all the different personalities share the same body, they each have their own memories, physical appearances, and their own characteristics.
DID is nothing like schizophrenia, but these terms are vaguely similar and that's why people get confused.
Going back to WebMD's research, "people who have schizophrenia do not have multiple personalities."
In KnowledgeNuts article their research says, "When schizophrenia is mentioned, it often goes along with ideas that a person is hearing voices from their other personalities. The two disorders are completely different, though, with those suffering from schizophrenia-prone to delusions, hallucinations, and difficulty in finishing complete thoughts and sentences.
Schizophrenia is a condition in which a person interprets reality in an abnormal way. A major part of the symptoms includes hallucinations, which can include both (or either) seeing or hearing things that don’t exist—it’s this part of the disorder that’s probably most over-represented in pop culture and mainstream media, interpreted as a split personality that leads to violent actions."
Now, going back to DID, there is no indication that a person is harmed whenever one of their personalities dominants over them, as you see in Split.
However, when one personality dominants over another in the same body, they appear to blackout and have no recognition of where they are or what happened because they are a different person.
Mayo Clinic and many other medical sources say that there is no known cure for DID, but they say that treatment such as "talk therapy" helps people cope with this disease, as well as their severe trauma that they may have had in the past.
