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Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai : A Study Case of Dissociative Identity Disorder

Teen age, in my opinion, is the most fragile years in someone's life. Most of people search their identity in those years to be brought back in the adult years. So, most likely, what happened in the years of teens would continue to become our basic personality for the years to come. Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai is an anime revolving around troubles within teenagers that surfaced and came out as a reality phenomenon. From a struggle to become acknowledged by everyone else to a simple crush for a guy that definitely would not return that affection. But from this anime, there is one trouble that is far more serious than those and that is bullying.

In this anime, it is known that the major character's sister, Kaede, faced a crippling depression after being cyber bullied by her peers being told to "just die" by them. This is causing an abnormality of Adolescence Syndrome which caused Kaede to have scars and wounds across her body as it reflected the scars and wounds within her mental health. But what followed that is far more worse. Her trauma led her to a certain mental condition called Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) or previously knows as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) which caused her to have another personality within her which emerges in one morning Sakuta trying to wake her up but she did not know anything about him. For that, let's talk further about this psychological disorder.

Taken from Psychology Today, Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is a severe condition in which two or more distinct identities, or personality states, are present and alternately take control of an individual. The evidence for DID dates back to Paleolithic era but first recorded in 1791 from a 20 year old woman from Germany who adopted another personality of a French aristocrat and even began speaking in fluent French (Schmidt, 2007).  The more popular case of this DID came from a book published in 1973 written by Flora Rheta Schreiber, Sybil. The book itself told the treatment of Sybil Dorsett by her psychoanalyst, Cornelia B. Wilbur. In this book, Sybil described having 16 personalities within herself. In the paper written by Tim Schmidt as an Integrative Research Paper, the case of Sybil has come to be considered as the most important clinical case of multiple personality which linked to early childhood abuse. From the same paper, it is explained that DID emerged due to early childhood sexual abuse or trauma. DID happened to people who want to forget or escape from the anxiety developed by the trauma which cause a personality to dissociate. Now, how is it connected to Kaede from Bunny Girl Senpai?

Kaede developed this DID condition after her Adolescence Syndrome occurred. She woke up with no recollection of her brother even her surroundings. She has no memories of living with her parents or her brother. The way she talks and walks is different. How she eats is different. Everything is different. Kaede became a panda loving girl who has a huge crush on her brother which was something is not Kaede. Kaede herself felt that the other Kaede or the main personality is not her and she wanted to be herself. It is appeared too that when she switched back to her main personality, she did not have any recollection of the days she spent as panda loving Kaede. . Her trauma after being a victim of cyber bullying caused this DID condition to surfaced. Sakuta even described it as her decision to sever a part of her memory to escape that crushing feeling. Sakuta said it happened so her main personality would not brake. 

In a paper written by Paulette M. Gillig, MD, PhD in 2009, it is stated that patients who have been diagnosed with DID tend to posses extreme sensitivity to interpersonal trust and rejection issues thus makes treatment in a managed care setting difficult. In Kaede's case, Kaede developed a sense of distrust towards others and chose to stay at home while avoiding any contact with anybody aside her brother. Since she only trusts her brother, she could become relaxed around people that personally trusted by Sakuta like the people he brought home along. In the same paper stated that usually after some treatment and therapy, a system of alters could collapse and the patient will gain her true identity. Kaede, in the end, might have her alter collapsed after she accomplished few of her goals and might wished to finish her goal with her real self so she chose to switch back to her original personality.

In the very end, Kaede could be a major study case for Dissociative Identity Disorder. Her depiction of DID came from a trauma of cyber bullying that could came from everyone in this world. I really love how this anime wanted us to be more aware of this condition as the world of internet start to get wilder and more dangerous than ever. I would like to say that please guys, let's stop bullying or cyber bullying. Take your time to think about what to say to others especially in the internet as you don't know who actually sit behind the screen. It could be anyone and you don't really know how his or her personality and mental condition as you are not seeing. After all, it is your choice : to cut a scar on someone for his/her life or to heal someone for his/her future.

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