The Clinical syndrome of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) is a major dissociative disorder that is being increasingly diagnosed in victims of severe child abuse. While the disorder has been recognized for over 200 years, it is poorly characterized and little is known about its long term outcome. At present, there are an estimated 7000 diagnosed cases in the U.S. We have systematically collected data on over 200 cases in treatment in the United States. Our results indicate that MPD is a clinical syndrome with core features of dissociative and depressive symptoms in individuals with a history of child abuse occurring between ages 2 to 14 years of age. There appear to be important differences between males and females on a number of features.
