Multiple personality disorder.

DEARSIRS In the Psychiatric Bulletin (September 1989,13, 513), Dr Lai Fernando discussed his dearth of multiple personality disorder (MPD) patients in various countries including Canada. He also knew of no other colleagues with such cases. However, many of his Canadian colleagues are treating MPD patients as well as doing research. My own initial cases date from 1977 when I was working in Germany. Canadian psychiatrists have attended courses on the diagnosis and treatment of MPD and other dissoci ative disorders which were held at three of the last four annual meetings of the Canadian Psychiatric Association. The time has come for psychiatry to look with an open mind at the recent advances in the scientific literature on the diagnosis of MPD. Arguments claiming this to be an American creation are now wearing rather thin. While we debate this issue in print, many MPD patients are being deprived of therapy both in Canada and the UK because some psychiatrists choose to make MPD an issue of "to believe or not to believe", rather than an issue of