Study shows that people are now becoming disabled by choice and calling themselves 'Transabled'

I still cant understand why anyone will voluntarily want to be disabled for life or maybe my reasoning might just be different from those of these people, which brings us to the question of; 'have you ever imagine feeling like an arm or leg is not your own or daydreaming about being blind and paralyzed'? Well the answer might not be too far away as some people are now becoming disabled by choice and calling themselves "transabled."

This can be attributed to body integrity identity disorder (BIID) which is described as a rare psychological condition that makes healthy individuals feel like they're supposed to be disabled. 

According to study, many with BIID suffer in silence, while others take issues into their own hands by going even as far as to injure and disable themselves on purpose. 

Researchers in Canada are now trying to better understand how transabled people think and feel.

Clive Baldwin, a Canada Research Chair in Narrative Studies who teaches social work at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B., has interviewed 37 people worldwide who identify themselves as transabled of which most of them are men.

About half of them are in Germany and Switzerland, with few others in Canada. According to Baldwin, most of them crave an amputation or paralysis, and interestingly, he has interviewed one person who wants his penis removed and another who wants to be blind. Are you kidding me?

Most of them arrange “accidents” to help achieve their goal. One dropped an incredibly heavy concrete block on his legs — an attempt to injure himself so bad an amputation would be needed but unfortunately for him, doctors saved his leg as he now limps, but still not the disability he wanted.

Baldwin noted that the transabled people are very secretive and often keep their desires to themselves and according to him, one 78-year-old man told him he’d lived with the secret for 60 years and never told his wife.

According to Baldwin, some of his study participants do draw parallels to the experience many transgender people express of not feeling like they’re in the right body.

This disorder is beginning to be thought of as a neurological problem with the body’s mapping, rather than a mental illness, said Baldwin.

There is no known cause of the disorder and, as of now, the only treatment is therapy.

The trans people within the disability movement are seeking their due place in the society, or at very least a bit of understanding in a public that cannot fathom why anyone would want to be anything other than healthy and mobile.

Source: National Post.