Case Reports in Medicine
Volume 2009 (2009), Article ID 814292, 2 pages
doi:10.1155/2009/814292
Case Report

Mirror Writing and a Dissociative Identity Disorder

Catherine Le,1 Joyce Smith,2 and Lewis Cohen2

1Department of Neurology at the University of California, Davis, 4860 Y Street, Sacramento, CA 95817, USA
2Psychiatric Consultation Service, Baystate Medical Center, 759 Chestnut Street, Springfield, MA 01199, USA

Received 8 July 2009; Accepted 25 August 2009

Academic Editor: Linda Gonder-Frederick

Copyright © 2009 Catherine Le et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Individuals with dissociative identity disorder (DID) have been known to show varied skills and talents as they change from one dissociative state to another. For example, case reports have described people who have changed their handedness or have spoken foreign languages during their dissociative states. During an interview with a patient with DID, a surprising talent emerged when she wrote a sentence for the Folstein Mini-Mental State Exam—mirror writing. It is not known whether her mirror writing had a deeper level of meaning; however, it does emphasize the idiosyncratic nature of dissociative identity disorder.