Velia D'Amore

I have a few disclaimers to make. The first: Uh... Velia's alter Melania was conceived long before I ever heard of Melania Trump, and this is not a dig at her. The remaining and more important points concern Dissociative Identity Disorder. In making this CS, I tried to do a lot of research into DID, whether it really exists, and how it manifests. As far as I can tell from what limited information I can find, it does exist, but childhood-trauma-induced DID is (unlike in shows) fairly often split by age not just personality. Velia's alters are split by basic personality, and her history involves being convinced by a psychiatrist when she was young that she was experimented on and developed these alters due to that experimentation, a suggestion that simply was not true. Her backstory reflects the conflict that has existed surrounding DID, where some people believe that DID can be caused by the suggestion of psychiatrists instead of repeated childhood trauma. This is not to say that I do not think DID exists, nor is it meant to devalue people who developed the disorder due to trauma or to suggest that psychiatrists are evil. I don't even know enough to say for certain that DID can be caused by suggestion. It is in part because I felt creating alters induced by a psychiatrist was a way to bring up the issue in a subject so deeply mired in misinformation and stereotypes, and in part because it was easier than creating age-limited alters induced by trauma. Thirdly, I would also like to note that while Velia was neither experimented on nor abused as a child, she was severely bullied and went through a period of time where her attachment to her parents was damaged by them being afraid of her magical abilities, all before the age of six, which do fit the conditions for developing traumagenic DID, and the impact of the psychiatrist may have been less than she and her family think it was. And lastly, I want to make it clear that this isn't me trying to discourage anyone from seeing a psychiatrist, psychologist, or therapist. Velia's family had the bad luck of stumbling upon one who did not know what he was doing and did not care about the damage he could do. I have personally had a bad experience with an inexperienced therapist who violated my trust and almost convinced my parents I might have schizophrenia, so I don't think it's totally unreasonable to have a character who's had a bad mental health specialist. I had this happen also in part because accessibility of mental health specialists and support for mental illness is apparently poor in Italy. I DON'T KNOW THIS FOR CERTAIN, I'M GOING OFF THE INFORMATION I COULD FIND, DON'T KILL ME IF YOU'RE ITALIAN.