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.”