Mental Disorder or …?

Have you ever felt that part of you, wasn’t suppose to be there? Perhaps feeling like you was born into the wrong gender? Or maybe having an urgent desire to amputate your limb(s)? Body Integration Identify Disorder (BIID) is a rising rare condition where people have an, “overwhelming desire to amputate one or more healthy limbs or become paraplegic.” Since it has attracted attention, the question of labeling it as either a mental disability/disorder or ‘hand-wired identity’.

People describe BIID as a constant itch that they can’t rid. People go to the extreme to calm this urge by following through their decision to illegally or harmfully amputating their limb(s). “Unfortunately, there’s too many people that take it into their own hands and end up dying.” Yes, revealing that urge should be a priority but also to avoid having people potentially putting themselves in a life-threatening situation. We must come up with a quick safe temporary resolution other than amputation. Then must try to gathering people with BIID to further excavate any evidence where to potentially find a resolution or more insight.

         BIID does overlap some areas with Gender Identity Disorder (GID) people in ways such as having a body image that doesn't agree with what they were biologically given. Both take them a period of time for them to realize that something isn’t syncing mentally and physically. “… A persistent, torturous chasm between their mind’s image of their own body, and the physical body they inhabit. They say their urge to ‘right’ themselves is overwhelming.” Thus with some individuals with GID have a reassignment surgery to sync their mental and physically identity. Over the years this surgery has become socially acceptable since it did relieve this complex identity crisis that GID people faced. Someone who is mental disable should be treated as a disability unless relieved. Once someone is cured, he or she should be able to be 100% cognitively functionally. If BIID were to receive more recognitions and socially acceptable then perhaps will increase furthermore research and development for alternatives to relieve the stress. 

Another issue that researchers have found in a few BIID with patients was a variation in the right parietal lobe where a person’s self boy image is located. “What’s suggested from this is that because of this dysfunction in the right parietal lobe, this sense of unified body image isn’t formed.” If this is the case, then like many other chemically unbalanced mental disabilities, there are methods to regulate the unbalances. However, there is still not enough evidence or people to see if it valid to fit in the Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder. Unless nothing is done to progress the recognition of the people who suffering from BIID, the lack of treatment will led to more unnecessary deaths. 

Overall, BIID is something to not be disregarded, regardless if he or she might put himself or herself in harms way. If someone is willing to illegally and despite to feel at ease then maybe it is something that we all should consider taken action on. People shouldn’t be uncomfortable in their own skin and should have the right to reach happiness.  “At least they may know they have given BIID people of the future a better chance of a mentally satisfactory life. Living a lie is the worst human punishment.”

 

Health and Mind - Rough Draft

Being healthy, whatever way you choose to define it, starts from the mind. No doubt about it, the term good health varies in meaning from person to person. However, preparing yourself to follow a certain lifestyle begins in the mind. It’s believed that a person is healthy if he or she works out and eats their greens. However, I disagree, a huge step in becoming healthy and most importantly staying healthy, is building self-esteem. Self-esteem and confidence are huge contributors to self-love, to untimely raise against what society deems us to be wrong. Bodybuilders Roxanne Edwards and Cassils strive to better themselves as individuals while achieving their idolized body figure.

Roxanne Edwards is a hardcore bodybuilder and inevitably makes people take a second glance at her muscular physic. Edwards physical goal is being “Peeled,” Her aim is to have people see her as, “… when you look at me and you can look at me and you can see right through me. You can look at stuff on me and see the fibers in the muscle moving underneath my skin.” Being able to leg press more than one thousand pounds, there is no doubt that she is not physically unfit. Throughout the interview with S. Adrian Massey in DISMagazine, she carries her confidence on her shoulder, freely expressing her thoughts and ideas about her body. She acknowledges that society has a bias for women to have certain bodily features such as breasts with a petite frame. However that does not affect how she embraces her femininity. Mentally, her self-confidence is what drives her to be what others call her “inspiring.” “I’m not putting a handcuff on your potential. The only person doing that is you. I just chose to unshackle mine.” She states that she’ll let her body, “speak for itself” and after hearing and seeing her through an interview and photo-shoots, I don’t need to meet her to know that she is overall content with what she believes.

Heather Cassils, a personal trainer wanted to test social expectations through her transformation of her transgender body. Committing to a project where she must bulk up 20+ pounds of muscle in less than a 23-week period by the aid of steroids and collapsing her process in a small video. Though she does not approve of the use of steroids, she solely did it for the act of revealing, “society’s obsessed with extremes.” Her outcomes were successful, attracting attention to what she describe as “freaky androgyny.” Men would bully about her breasts at the gym and at one point wanted to arm wrestle or fight her. She challenged the way society looks at a female body, “I wanted this project to be a reflection of the value that is placed on the surface and what goes into constructing that surface. “She extended herself from: force-feeding to extreme fatigue and lost of her flexibility to prove her point. That society will always be attentive of people who oppose the social norm. The ability to think outside of what society wants you to think is an aspect of building this self-confidence to rise above objectors.

Socially, we must not commode to how society depicts how we ought to be but rather stand for what you believe if right. To have confidence and an individual mind to run one’s self, is the path to have a true health. Combining both physical and mental health, can create what people may call inspire and original.