Attendance at these support groups, as well as assigned reading in self-help books, surrounds the patient with validation for the therapist's theories. The vast majority of women with FMS are white, middle class, and above average in education. This corresponds to the profile of a typical woman who enters long term psychotherapy, and who perceives such activity as an important way to solve life's problems. But usually life becomes far more complicated. Relationships with other family members becomes contingent on their not challenging the patient's beliefs.
Family members are usually too shocked and disorganized to coherently respond to accusations.
Such lawsuits demand compensation for bills from psychotherapists and possibly other doctors who treated adult medical problems that therapists somehow link to childhood traumas. Since FMS patients sincerely believe they have been victimized, more than a few juries have given verdicts sympathetic to them. Often the time demands and expense of the therapy itself become a major life disruption. An increasing number of psychiatrists and psychologists are coming to view MPD as a product of environmental suggestion and reinforcement, since the diagnosis was hardly made prior to ten years ago. Some therapists believe SRA is the work of a vast underground cult network in these United States.