Childhood Trauma Essay

1140 Words5 Pages

Throughout the studies mentioned above, it seems indicated that childhood trauma or abuse causes DID. However, there are a few numbers of researchers who criticized the conventional link between the two; they questioned the studies’ objectivity. The majority of experiments do not seem to support the relationship between the disorder in adulthood and child abuse. Also, during experiments, the researchers do not show control for overlapped conditions of other disorders, not only those of DID, which does not highlight any correlation between child abuse and dissociative disorders. Lastly, it is indicated that there has been a decrease in reports of abuse and mental disorder because the participants’ stories of dysfunctional behavior in their families …show more content…

There are correlational studies done to find the relationship between dissociation and sleep disturbances with findings in the range of .30 to .55 to acknowledge that irregular sleep patterns and dissociation are related. Because these studies are usually qualitative research, there is no way the researchers can avoid extraneous variables so there are a lot of limitations at stake. Therefore, a few researchers decide to conduct a study to address these limitations (Giesbrecht, Smeets, Leppink, Jelicic, and Merckelbach, 2007). The aim is to demonstrate a relationship between sleep loss and dissociative symptoms. They deprive 25 healthy volunteers of one night of sleep and the result of the sleep loss is an increase in the symptoms. Nevertheless, there is no further information of what are the common dissociative symptoms found when the participants are sleep-deprived. If there is, it can elevate the relationship between sleep irregularities and DID to a higher level. Otherwise, it can be misinterpreted that sleep-deprived people, like students in the International Baccalaureate Program, are prone to diagnose with dissociative symptoms. Nonetheless, researchers suggest that this link between sleep abnormalities and dissociation can explain the overlap of dissociation, trauma, fantasy proneness, and cognitive failures. Overall, these point of views bring a refreshing perspective to the debate of whether DID is caused experientially or