In her autobiography and in numerous interviews, Chase wrote that she was repeatedly and violently sexually and physically abused by her stepfather and beaten and neglected by her mother during her childhood and teenage years. By her report, she had always remembered that molestation and abuse occurred from the age of two onwards but that she could not focus on details before going into therapy. It was during sessions with hypnotherapist, Dr. Robert Phillips, that she concluded that she had multiple personalities.

Unlike most people documented with DID, Chase refused to integrate her personalities, instead thinking of them as a cooperating team. In her book, she describes giving talks to convicted child molesters to explain her abuse history and to warn them that child abuse is psychologically devastating.

In a television interview with Oprah Winfrey, Chase stated that a Washington Post reporter had tracked down her family, including her stepfather, who denied everything. Another interview with Phil Donahue revealed that Phillips himself had sought out the family and discovered that her mother had also sexually abused her. The mother had died just before the book's publication.

When Rabbit Howls is one of very few books written by a psychiatric client, rather than by the attending psychiatrist, about an experience of multiple personalities. The first such book was written in 1908 by Nellie Persons Bean, of Dr. Morton Prince's so-called "BCA" case Chris Costner-Sizemore wrote two such biographies, I'm Eve and A Mind of My Own Cru Gordon published My Life As a Multiple, an account of his multiple personality experience, using the name Cameron West.

Chase's daughter Kari Iddings, known in the book as "Page", appeared with her on the Donahue interview and described her mother as living a relatively normal life, with certain phobias. Iddings now lives in the Washington, D.C. area and is involved with training puppies to become service dogs at Fidos for Freedom. She also works at the U.S. National Arboretum.

Her daughter also appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show, dated October 06, 2010.

Chase was the first guest on Oprah Winfrey's radio program, and one of the first on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She returned in 1990 for a second interview. She was portrayed by Shelley Long in the 1990 telemovie Voices Within: The Lives of Truddi Chase.

Chase died on March 10th, 2010.