Dissociative disorders require a truly psychologically informed approach to assessment and diagnosis. A narrow focus on presenting signs and symptoms could lead to mistaken diagnoses because some symptoms that frequently occur in dissociative disorders are also characteristic of various anxiety or fearrelated disorders, depressive disorders, schizophrenia and other primary psychotic disorders, and diseases of the nervous system. Symptoms such as hearing voices or blindness, for example, may be attributed to psychosis or neurological disease if they are not recognized as part of a dissociative disorder presentation. An accurate diagnosis can only be obtained through an examination of the psychological function of the symptoms and-particularly in the case of more complex dissociative disorders such as dissociative identity disorder (DID) and partial DID-the underlying dissociative personality structure. Frequently, these symptoms represent adaptations to acute or chronic traumatizing experiences-that is, psychological attempts to protect the person from the environment.Often, an accurate dissociative disorder diagnosis, particularly DID, may not be obtained until years after the individual's first contact with mental health services (Dell, 2009). This is partly because intensive interviews are generally required to establish a DID diagnosis, but several other factors also contribute