Dr Cheryl Malmo
Dr Cheryl Malmo has a private psychotherapy practice in Edmonton, specializing in adult survivors of childhood trauma, sexual violence and women’s issues. Cheryl’s earliest training was in the mid 1960s at Warrendale in Toronto where she learned the Freudian practice of “going back to the point of injury and giving the person what they needed at that time.” Cheryl fell into her specialty by accident. Looking back now, Cheryl strongly believes she saw her first case of Dissociative Identity Disorder (then Multiple Personality Disorder) shortly after she began practicing in the 1970s, a sexual abuse survivor whose beautiful line drawings were always of multiple people. In the early 1980s Cheryl learned to diagnose clients whose dissociation was severe enough to be categorized as DID. When Hilary Stanton walked into her office on November 15, 1995, it took about 18 months to determine the diagnosis of DID, and so began therapy sessions with Hilary’s “alters”.
Special Note from Hilary
“I wish there was some way of telling you what a special therapist Cheryl is. Not just any therapist could have done what she did with me, I guarantee. And I would like that to be recognized somehow. After my breakdown there were days when I was switching so much that life was complete chaos and Cheryl was my lifeline. Sometimes the only thing that kept me going was knowing that I had another appointment, if I could just survive long enough to get myself into that little room where Cheryl sees patients – and where I felt safe.”
Dr Ruth Lanius
Dr Ruth Lanius is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Harris-Woodman Chair at the University of Western Ontario. She established the London Traumatic Stress Service which specializes in research and treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Her MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) studies of people suffering from PTSD produced some astonishing results: when reliving a traumatic memory during a brain scan, 30% of PTSD sufferers showed no increase in heart rate and had an out of body experience. They were dissociating from the memory. Scans of these dissociative people showed very different brain activity from control subjects.
Dr Lanius’ Study on Dissociative Responses
Dr Frank Putnam
Dr Frank Putnam is a Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, Ohio – and a world authority on Dissociative Identity Disorder. He trained in psychiatry at Yale University and in child psychiatry at George Washington University. Since the mid-80s, Dr Putnam has focused on the long term effect of childhood abuse. In 1989 he published Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder, a book that continues to be touted as a foundation to understanding DID. With two other researchers, Dr Putnam developed the Dissociative Experiences Scale, still commonly used in the diagnosis of DID. “There’s nothing like seeing a patient who has it (Multiple Personality Disorder or DID) to make you believe,” Dr. Frank Putnam, Newsweek 2007.