Two St. Thomas Social Work students, Nichola Park and Katelyn Bower, are working to raise awareness about Body Integrity Identity Disorder.
Transableism, or Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), is when you feel your healthy body should have some form of disability. Living within their healthy body is so unbearable to some people with BIID that they turn to self-amputation, self-injury, or suicide. Many people are unaware of BIID, or the issues that people living with it face.
Park and Bower are spending their work placement term working with Professor Clive Baldwin. Baldwin is conducting a research project on people living with BIID.
Baldwin has been researching BIID for just over two years. He is looking to hear the stories and experiences of those living with BIID.
“People with BIID feel the need to acquire a specific disability, such as blindness, deafness, paralysis, or amputation, and will often pretend to have such a disability to alleviate their feelings,” said Park in a press release.
Bower said the lack of knowledge about the disorder can lead to some unwelcome confrontations.
“Right now their experiences with BIID aren’t wholly positive,” said Bower. “There are a lot of negative reactions towards someone who wants to remove their own limb. Because in society having a want for a disability just doesn’t seem normal.”
Bower said one of the goals of the work placement is create a more accepting atmosphere.
“We are trying to create the space in society where people living with transableism or BIID can come forward and discuss their concerns, fears or desires associated with it,” said Bower. “We are talking with professionals, organizations, students and just the general population of Fredericton to create that space where they can come forward.”
While elective amputation surgeries aren’t illegal in Canada, many doctors believe that it violates the Hippocratic Oath, do no harm.
“By denying these people surgeries, we are actually causing them harm,” wrote Park in the press release. “People who are denied surgeries look for other alternatives including surgeries in foreign, underground, unsafe hospitals where the risk of death due to infection is high.”
There are few statistics about people living with BIID, but recently more stories have come to light. One notorious case is a North Carolina woman who, with the help of her psychologist, poured drain cleaner in her eyes to fulfill her wish of being blind.
“No one can wrap their brain around the fact that someone wants to become disabled when society depicts disability in such a negative way,” said Bower. “If society was set up in a more accommodating way, even for just everyday disabilities, or even a mother pushing a stroller around them it may be more acceptable to say, this is what I have.”
