"Diagnosing" MPD from a Weblog

KESQ, NewsChannel 3 in Palm Springs, CA has a story about Shasta Groene's abductor, Joseph Duncan, which diagnoses Duncan with multiple personalities based on nothing more than what he wrote in a weblog.

This May, two months before investigators say he murdered four people in Idaho, Duncan wrote about his multiple personalities on his website. "The demons have taken over: as far as letting God take care of the demons, it's too late. They've locked up the 'Happy Joe' person in the same dungeon that 'Happy Joe' kept them in for years. Now they are loose and I am very afraid."

The story is most notable for what it lacks: (at minimum) credible corroboration from a psychologist familiar with DID/MPD that the one quote offered has anything to do with DID/MPD.

While providing a URL for parents to netnanny.com to protect children on the Internet, the story would have been far more useful had it provided websites which offer resources to teach both parents and children about child abuse prevention. Two such sites are Red Flag Green Flag and Child Lures Prevention. Also MIA in this piece is a website with reliable information about dissociative disorders.

I am not a psychologist, but I do know that when schizophrenics go off their meds they are prone to visions in the same category as Duncan wrote about. To somehow conclude that Duncan is writing "about his multiple personalities" is not only sloppy, lazy reportage, but just adds to the eternal -- and wrong -- stereotype that people with DID/MPD are serial killers.