| Body Integrity Identity Disorder |
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A person with BIID typically wants one or more of his or her limbs cut off. The condition should not be mistaken for a person with Acrotomophilia , who is sexually attracted to ''other'' persons who are already missing limbs. However, there does seem to be some relationship between the two disorders, with some individuals exhibiting both conditions. Today, very few Surgeon s will treat BIID patients by giving them what they want. Some act out their desires, pretending they are amputees using prostheses and other tools to ease their desire to be one. There are hence several recorded cases of sufferers resorting to self-amputation of a "superfluous" limb, for example by allowing a train to run over it, or by damaging the limb so badly that surgeons will have to amputate it. Often the obsession is with one specific limb, with patients "not feeling complete while they still have a left leg", for example. However, BIID does not simply involve amputation. It involves any wish to significantly alter body integrity. Some people suffer from the desire to become paralyzed, blind, deaf, use orthopaedic appliances such as leg-braces, etc. The condition is usually treated, unsuccessfully, as a Psychiatric disorder. Persons suffering from BIID can be as young as four or five years old when they first discover their condition, for example by feeling jealous of an amputee. Some BIID patients compare the evaluation of BIID as a psychiatric illness to the historical classification of homosexuality as a mental illness. Like transgender people, someone suffering from BIID feels that he or she is "meant" to live with an altered body. They consider this to be an unconscious genetic decision, much like sexual orientation. The same argument -- no one would choose to have something this difficult -- is applied. Some BIID-rights advocates suggest that as little as 30 years ago, being transgender, gay, bisexual or anything relating to that was considered just as "wrong" as BIID is today, and that this should change in the future. More research needs to be done about BIID and apotemnophilia - only a few studies have been done on the subject; but as research gains ground, more and more hospitals recognize the condition. BOOKS
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BIID IN POPULAR CULTURE
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