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Nature Of Symptoms And Diagnosis

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Part 2: Nature of Symptoms and Diagnosis
 Although the movie never specifies what Teddy’s diagnosis was, Dissociative Identity Disorder is the primary disorder that he should be diagnosed with and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be secondary. Dissociative Identity Disorder is characterized by the presence of two or more distinct personality states. The multiple personalities differ in many areas including affect, behavior, memory, perception, cognition, and sensory and motor function. The disorder causes great distress and/or impairment in the individual who suffers from it. In the movie Shutter Island, Teddy suffers from identities. His main personality, or host, is discovered at the end of the movie to be Laeddis. His secondary personality, or alter, is the personality of Teddy. These are the only two personalities that he switches between. When the character was Teddy, he did not remember anything about Laeddis. In fact, he thought Laeddis was an entirely different person. Dissociative Identity Disorder often occurs as the result of a traumatic event. In Teddy’s case it was the result of his wife drowning his children. and then him subsequently shooting her. Additionally, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is characterized by exposure to a trauma and the symptoms that occur within a minimum of 1 month following the trauma. The person must show symptoms of re-experiencing, avoidance, alteration of mood and cognitions, and hyperarousal. Distress or impairment must also

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