My arm’s really been bugging me lately…
…I think I’ll cut it off! Via Metafilter, apparently an emerging mental disorder is Body Integrity Identity Disorder. People who suffer from this disorder will undergo voluntary amputation and “need to have certain appendages cut off in order to feel whole again.”
The closest comparison to this disorder, which incidentally is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is Gender Identity Disorder.
BIID, to me, is pretty ridiculous. It seems contradictory to the point of modern medicine to put people in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives in order to make them “healthy.” Gangrene is one thing, but the psychological condition that for some reason your leg should be missing? Let’s try talking through this in therapy before chopping legs off, hmm?