People acquire dissociative disorders through various trauma, including abuse and neglect by caregivers and/or other perpetrators, leading to complex-PTSD and dissociation. 

Statistics say that 70% of our peers with DID attempt suicide (often repeatedly), we are in and out of mental hospitals and crisis units if available.  We need help, but it takes on-average 6-12 years to get an accurate diagnosis, and double that to complete therapy.

Many of us live in fear for our safety, are in extreme poverty, homeless, on disability, afraid to go outside because we have only known a life of being targeted. We need a voice, representation, and allies to demand better outcomes. 

Many people with DID (1-3% of the world population) have to mask and live in hiding. We lose friends and jobs over movies. Therapists refuse to treat people like us, or have a poor understanding of how to help or actively push misinformed, outdated, and abusive points of view on their clients. According to Harvard University, 90% of therapists are not trained to help us, and may not have even had mention of dissociative disorders (especially DID) in their training. Therapists new to treating dissociative disorders are most often referred to International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (the ISSTD) treatment guidelines for guidance, which are outdated by a decade (released in 2011 but the latest reference is from 2009).

Help make the ISSTD more aware of how urgent it is to rewrite their treatment guidelines to help end professional stigma and therapy abuse, and urge the industry to shorten long diagnosis and treatment times and poor therapeutic outcomes for people with dissociative disorders (DID, OSDD, P-DID, DPDR…), PTSD, C-PTSD, etc. Sign this petition, to make your voice heard!

New guidelines need to correct many of the confusing pitfalls of the industry, lead to faster and better diagnosis, better treatment & the empowerment of clients. These guidelines need to be ready before the ICD-11 is implemented in 2022. The entire industry depends on these guidelines as a “quick start guide” for therapists worldwide, and they need to be widely accessible and translatable.

We want an alliance and partnership between the industry and the client community with mutual respect; to actually be listened to and heard. We want the ISSTD to be more mindful of information and articles they share on social media. They should represent clients respectfully, without bias, professionally, and positively only. We want public support from the ISSTD for the online community. We want the ISSTD to be our best ally! 

To best serve traumatized clients, therapists should be encouraged to accept and understand a wide variety of divergent issues such as attraction, (trans)gender, neurodivergence, multiple-disabilities, eating and other comorbid disorders, culture, aging, language, etc. It’s also important to note that there is no “right” way for a client’s dissociative system to present itself; it does not have to look like the models in the books — the count, presentation, inner world, and how they express themselves does not need to fit into the examples given in the books or movies. No two systems look alike.

The guidelines should encourage and outline client-led therapy, covering a wide range of treatment options for a professional to consult with a client about their choices for therapy, therapeutic goals & outcomes. They should also include clear guidance for handling client distress and crisis planning with clients to help curb the 70+% repeated suicide attempt rate of people within this cohort. (DSM-5)

To keep the guidelines easily up-to-date, we recommend utilizing a living document, in a format that can easily be edited and added to, open to comments, with periodic timestamped “official revisions” and released in PDF format.  This will allow the addition of new citations, research, theories and treatment options on an ongoing basis without needing to make a massive effort to rewrite the entire document.

We, the undersigned, are hoping that this petition will help bring about positive change in our lives and in the industry, in a timely manner. Please consider our request for immediate action as we truly believe this can save lives!