not necessarily. no one caught my DID until I was in my 20's and a college psych class required the students to go through a full battery of diagnostic evaluations. my alters had been taking over since very early childhood and handling things quite well during my childhood and adulthood. I was having inner problems associated with DID but outward no one noticed because every time I got triggered and dissociated the resulting alter that took over was one that could handle the problem. what that means is to anyone outside my body...my family, my friends, my love interests through out my life, and my wife... no one knew and no one saw any problems ...until my system of alters finally encountered something that was beyond what they were able to handle or learn about and handle.

most people with DID you can not tell they have it until after their internal system of alters have reached their limits of what their job, purpose, reasons for being created are. it may just be that this persons internal system of alters was comprised in such a way that they were able to handle everything in her life until after she married and at some point during that time after marriage that her alters started having problems taking care of what ever was triggering her to dissociate.

most of the people I know with DID received their diagnosis after adulthood and after their internal system of alters were no longer able to take care of that persons triggers and reason they dissociated. I know someone who is in their 80's and just got their diagnosis because they just started having problems related to technology that her alters were not capable of handling for her. she was in a computer class learning how to use a computer. she had no alters that were computer literate and none that could learn this skill. therefore when she got overwhelmed because of computer problems thats when people started noticing she was having mental stress, anxiety, mood swings and other tell tale symptoms of a mental breakdown, that resulted in her getting evaluated and diagnosed with DID.

my point is we can see these shows and make speculations but ultimately all we are doing is possibly causing ourselves to become obsessed, confused, stressed and perpetrating all the stigmatizing that we would not want others to do to us. my opinion stands the only people qualified to say whether these people on these tv shows have the mental disorders the shows are about is those persons treatment providers. that is why I leave these shows with the attitude of well good ratings and leave the analyzing to that persons treatment providers.