On this week’s MI Healthy Mind, you’ll get to meet Sarah Desjardins, who to all outward appearances, is an engaging, highly intelligent, well-adjusted and successful woman.
No one, not even Sarah herself, could have imagined the horrific childhood abuses that led to the development of a coping mechanism called Dissociative Identity Disorder, commonly known as multiple personalities.
The dissociative aspect is thought to be a coping mechanism, the person literally shuts off or dissociates themselves from a situation or experience that’s too violent, traumatic or painful to assimilate with his conscious self.
Dissociative disorders are characterized by an involuntary escape from reality characterized by a disconnection between thoughts, identity, consciousness and memory.
MI Healthy Mind airs every Sunday at 7 a.m. on Local Fox 32.