Mr. Walker's Dissociative Identity Disorder Case Study

Last year, I had the opportunity to meet and listen to one of The University of Georgia’s greatest running backs in history, Herschel Walker. Being the UGA fan that I am, I was a little star-struck when meeting the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner. He worked with a medical agency touring Department of Defense locations while promoting the ideals of seeking mental health care when needed. Mr. Walker cared so deeply about advocating to apply for treatment, he went as far as self-disclosing with our Airmen his mental health diagnosis. Although I loved the idea of bringing in a football player showing his willingness to seek treatment, I had no idea what diagnosis Mr. Walker had. He floored me when he disclosed how he stated how his provider diagnosed him with Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder). He started to bring up that during his days of playing football, individual personas would take place to get through periods of his life. Of course, during his football career, these roles were able to succeed in many ways. However, it was after his football career, which he lived for many years in control of these identities under one common goal, Mr. Walker lost his conduct at the …show more content…
I am one to value how society and interpersonal experiences can create an influence within the presentation of a patient. Spanos (1994) believed there to be a “fundamental flaw” to the post-traumatic, or disease, model and introduced an alternative model called “sociocognitive” suggesting how a “sociohistorical product” motivates the existence of multiple personalities (p. 143). I found how Lilienfeld (1999) best conceptualized the full description of this model by explaining how the idea of Dissociative Identity Disorder prompts the therapists during treatment to evoke symptoms in the patient as well as the popularized stories portrayed of the diagnosis by the media (p.