Hi, new here and not sure if I belong

[MaximiliansMom]

Hi all, came across Mosaic Minds as I was trying to research DDNOS. My almost-19-yr-old son has announced (to his stepmom) that he has other people who live inside him and help him. He's been in psychiatric care since he was 9 for issues with anger outbursts, domestic violence, and other inappropriate behaviors, and he's been variously dx over the years with everything from ADHD to bipolar disorder to conduct disorder to Asperger's. He's been hospitalized four or five times, the last time for a suicide attempt.

I don't know of any specific trauma that would have caused him to develop dissociative disorder; his dad and I divorced when he was 7 and he's had a loving stepfather since then. I don't know the whole story of how things were when he lived PT with his dad--it depends on whom you ask. I do know I never witnessed him being abused.

Starting a few years back, he began mentioning that he had a person he called Paranoia who told him to do bad stuff. We never could decide whether he was just saying this for attention or was serious, and this included his caregivers. I don't want to sound like I doubt my kid, because I love him; but he has had a tendency over the years to pick up on whatever malady the kid(s) he was hanging around with at that time were currently suffering from. He is now away at a trade school where he lives on campus, and his roommate, apparently, truly has DID, to where he thinks his personalities are telling him to suck people's blood for sustenance (they're all vampires). My son says his Paranoia personality has been replaced by another one that he calls Maximilian, who is calmer and helps him, and also a female personality. He *also* says he needs blood.

Part of me thinks this is a heaping pile of you-know-what, and another part is terrified. Again, please don't think me insensitive--I'm a smart person with advanced degrees, but it's hard for me to understand how someone I've known for 19 years can have all this going on and I can't see it. To me, it appears as if these "personalities" appear when it's convenient for him, to get him out of something he's done wrong (and refuses to take responsibility for--which I believe is a learned behavior and something he came by naturally on his father's side). And I don't doubt he could convince himself they are real. But if he really is this messed up--and I have no way to know right now because this government program he's in pretty much controls his life right now--then I'm afraid that living with vampire boy is going to mess him up even worse. I really don't know what to do for him.

Maybe that was too long for an introduction, but as I said in the subject line, I don't know if I really belong here. I just didn't know where else to go. Thanks if you read this far.