I N S P I R A T I O N :: INTERESTING CASES - DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER
Hello again.
Interesting how each time I have a vision rehab assessment (or in this case, my vision rehab final in about 16 hours), I gravitate to this diary.
Since my last post, I had a NORA meeting featuring Dr. Marsha Benshir as the speaker. I was very glad she came and spoke for NORA, as it was one of the more informative NORA meetings we've had and I believe it helped spark interest in a lot of 1st year students at school. That made me happy to know that NORA is doing what it's supposed to and it made me feel like I was doing my due diligence as the incoming president of NORA. Dr. Benshir was very passionate about the field and was a great example to show how you can practice optometry outside of the realm of general primary care.
After the meeting, Dr. Benshir and I discussed an interesting topic.
Multiple personality disorder patients (aka dissociative identity disorder, DID).
What we discussed in these patients was mainly how to start treatment of them in an optometry sense. First and foremost, Dr. Benshir told me to always ask the patient if they are aware of the multiple personalities and how many personalities do they have. This is because (a) it helps you determine how difficult this patient is going to be to treat. Patients who are aware of their identities are easier to treat than those who do not. This is also because (b) each personality may require a different prescription. By having knowledge of other personalities, it's possible that they can help each other out by keeping track of which prescription belongs to who. Yes. How crazy is that? When I first learned about how each personality can have different prescriptions, it literally blew my mind. This goes to show much the brain actually has a role in vision opposed to our physiology and biology!
I recall that we were taught in first year vision science that there was a case where a patient who had multiple personalities, all of whom were 'blind' for many years until one personality who emerged that was able to see. I believe it was this case that helped cement the term cortical blindness. If it didn't help cement the term cortical blindness, it was the leeway our professor had to discuss cortical blindness.
PubMed link on this case: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17611729
Anyways, goes to show how exciting optometry can really get. At the same time, as much as I love these cases, I think I would personally prefer to do a different type of neuro-rehab optom if I were to delve into neuro-optom but I absolutely love reading about these amazing cases.
At this point, I still think I'm probably going to go into primary care with soft and specialty contact lenses (like myopia control) and ocular disease.
As always, off to studying I go.
Until next time,
-S
Interesting how each time I have a vision rehab assessment (or in this case, my vision rehab final in about 16 hours), I gravitate to this diary.
Since my last post, I had a NORA meeting featuring Dr. Marsha Benshir as the speaker. I was very glad she came and spoke for NORA, as it was one of the more informative NORA meetings we've had and I believe it helped spark interest in a lot of 1st year students at school. That made me happy to know that NORA is doing what it's supposed to and it made me feel like I was doing my due diligence as the incoming president of NORA. Dr. Benshir was very passionate about the field and was a great example to show how you can practice optometry outside of the realm of general primary care.
After the meeting, Dr. Benshir and I discussed an interesting topic.
Multiple personality disorder patients (aka dissociative identity disorder, DID).
What we discussed in these patients was mainly how to start treatment of them in an optometry sense. First and foremost, Dr. Benshir told me to always ask the patient if they are aware of the multiple personalities and how many personalities do they have. This is because (a) it helps you determine how difficult this patient is going to be to treat. Patients who are aware of their identities are easier to treat than those who do not. This is also because (b) each personality may require a different prescription. By having knowledge of other personalities, it's possible that they can help each other out by keeping track of which prescription belongs to who. Yes. How crazy is that? When I first learned about how each personality can have different prescriptions, it literally blew my mind. This goes to show much the brain actually has a role in vision opposed to our physiology and biology!
I recall that we were taught in first year vision science that there was a case where a patient who had multiple personalities, all of whom were 'blind' for many years until one personality who emerged that was able to see. I believe it was this case that helped cement the term cortical blindness. If it didn't help cement the term cortical blindness, it was the leeway our professor had to discuss cortical blindness.
PubMed link on this case: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17611729
Anyways, goes to show how exciting optometry can really get. At the same time, as much as I love these cases, I think I would personally prefer to do a different type of neuro-rehab optom if I were to delve into neuro-optom but I absolutely love reading about these amazing cases.
"Vision is how our minds touch the world around us." - Dr. Marsha Benshir
At this point, I still think I'm probably going to go into primary care with soft and specialty contact lenses (like myopia control) and ocular disease.
As always, off to studying I go.
Until next time,
-S
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