Becoming disabled by choice, not chance: ‘Transabled.'

[Tziva]

I can't speak to the people who are motivated by the ambiguous desire to "be disabled" but for the people who have a desire to remove working limbs because they don't feel they should have them, it's not a mental illness, it's actually a neurological disorder:

I found this real quick:
http://scienceblogs.com/neurophiloso...phantom-limbs/

But both Oliver Sacks and VS Ramachandran have written about it multiple times.

This is similar but different than the neurological disorder where you feel your limbs belong to someone else, although that is also a problem with the brain and not with some kind of mental illness.

I can't wait for somebody to tell me these people don't have a mental disorder

Your wish is granted.

[Tradewind]

They're just in it for the sweet parking spaces.

[Independent voter]

Maybe they like getting sympathy and special treatment?

[Kinferatu]

Why would you want to be disabled by choice? Some people have a screw loose! >.<

[josykay]

So if you cut a fully functional dick you don't need help?

They do not "want to cut their dick". They feel like a woman and want to look like one. If there would be better ways of altering your body to that of the other gender without having risky surgery I am sure most transfolk would use that. In addition a transgender person can still go to work, and can do most things other people can, besides having children. They still are independet from other people. People however who disable themself on purpose however can not.

[Raptor With a Saber]

This is not something new for those that think it is. This has been an actual mental issue for a long long time. Seen some things about a guy that cut off his own legs and one where a person froze them off. It was a documentary on the subject a few years ago

[Arrashi]

What the actual fucking fuck. Well if those people want to be disabled then wish granted because they are clearly mentally disabled. They really need help and probably few slaps to face (paired with buckets of cold water).

[Calzaeth]

So if you cut a fully functional dick you don't need help?

Unless you are a trained surgeon with all the tools o' trade in your living room and transplant organs ready to go in the freezer, then yes. You would need help if you cut off your fully functioning dick.

[Deleted]

They're just in it for the sweet parking spaces.

Same as those people who have kids just so they flash there tits in public.

[Deleted]

Pff you got a mental disorder for everything these days. Most of the "mental disorders" are just made to make retards feel sick and that is isn't their faults while they are just mongoloids.

[Felya]

I can't speak to the people who are motivated by the ambiguous desire to "be disabled" but for the people who have a desire to remove working limbs because they don't feel they should have them, it's not a mental illness, it's actually a neurological disorder:

I found this real quick:
http://scienceblogs.com/neurophiloso...phantom-limbs/

But both Oliver Sacks and VS Ramachandran have written about it multiple times.

This is similar but different than the neurological disorder where you feel your limbs belong to someone else, although that is also a problem with the brain and not with some kind of mental illness.

How is this different from Munchausen?

[Tziva]

How is this different from Munchausen?

They're not in the same category at all. Munchausen is a psychiatric disorder. What I was referring to was a neurological disorder, where your brain itself literally does not process ownership of the limb(s) in question. This can be the result of a congenital development, or caused by TBI or stroke or other brain damaging injury. People may be psychologically perfectly healthy and otherwise perfectly fine, although with some of the weirder neurological conditions, I can see how that might be hard to imagine.

A growing body of literature suggests that body awareness disorders such as BIID occur as a result of abnormal activity in the right parietal lobe, which is known to be essential for constructing a mental representation of the body. Specifically, this body image is constructed in the superior parietal lobule (SPL), which performs a function referred to as multisensory integration, whereby different types of sensory information entering the brain are brought together. Thus, information from the visual parts of the brain and the primary somatosensory cortex, which processes tactile sensations and proprioceptive information relating to the position of the body within space, is sent to the superior parietal lobule. There, it is combined with information from the motor cortex, which controls movement, and all is processed further to generate an internal model of the body. If these processes are perturbed, the body image is compromised.

Paul McGeoch of the Brain and Perceptual Process Laboratory at UCSD and his colleagues therefore postulated that the desire to have an otherwise healthy limb amputated occurs as a result of abnormal activity in the right superior parietal lobule, and recruited four male BIID sufferers (or apotemnophiles) from internet support groups to test their hypothesis. Three of these expressed a desire to have their left leg amputated, while the fourth wanted both legs removed. For their study, the researchers simply tapped the participants’ feet with a bundle of fibre-optic filaments, and at the same time, recorded the electrical activity of their brains using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Their responses to the tactile stimulation were compared to those of four controls.

In all four controls, tapping either foot caused an almost instantaneous activation of the right SPL. In the three apotemnophiles who wanted one leg amputated, tapping the unaffected foot evoked a response in the right SPL, but tapping the affected one did not, and in the fourth apotemnophile, who sought amputation of both legs, neither foot evoked a response. These findings confirm the researchers’ hypothesis that BIID arises as a result of abnormal function in the right parietal lobe. The brain does not register the limb as a part of the body, and contains no representation of it, so it is not incorporated into the body image. As a result, the apotemnophile has no sense of ownership over the limb, and feels strongly that it does not “belong” to him. It feels extraneous or redundant, so he wishes to have it removed.

But again, I was talking specifically about the people who have limbs they feel they shouldn't have.

If someone simply has a general desire to be disabled, that may very well be another issue or even Munchausen. This topic could easily cover both cases.

[gaymer77]

This seriously sounds like an Onion article. If it's real, it should definitely be considered a mental disorder.

Sadly not an Onion piece. This is a real disorder and its sad.

[Afrospinach]

There is a genuine mental disorder that causes people to feel like one or more of their limbs doesn't belong to them, and it supposedly feels so scary/messed up/wrong that a lot of them do try to cut it off themselves or even request surgery to remove them.

Yes that is what I thought also, it is a problem with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception . I thought it already had a name, "transabled" seems frivolous.

[Templar 331]

This kind of stuff makes me want to bang my head against a tree.

Can we please make a law that excludes these......I can't find a nice word.......people from receiving disability compensation. They do have a problem, but I don't feel we should pay them for being this freaking stupid.

[Mummbles]

This should really be treated like attempted suicide. Straight to the asylum!

[Lenonis]

What are your thoughts on this? Is it a real thing or a mental disorder?

Mental disorder. There really isn't any sort of valid reason why someone would want to become disable that isn't rooted in some sort of Munchhausen or whatever sort of issue. Whether it's a need for attention or a self-esteem problem, there isn't any way to spin the desire to become disabled as healthy.

EDIT -- Tziva's post also makes sense where it could be a neurological condition. I was more focusing on the "wanting to be disabled" part, not the "this doesn't belong to me"

[Deleted]

I think calling them Insensitive Stupid Attention whores is a better description than "Transabled".
Making yourself intentionally disabled..... Jesh I hope that these people don't get any of the benefits that a person with a disability caused through no fault of their own get.

[zorkuus]

People are going full retard.

The next trend will be transtard.

[Deleted]

I think calling them Insensitive Stupid Attention whores is a better description than "Transabled".
Making yourself intentionally disabled..... Jesh I hope that these people don't get any of the benefits that a person with a disability caused through no fault of their own get.

I don't see why they wouldn't I mean don't fat people unable to work get benefits too? Or people who get lung cancer because of smoking? They're all self inflicted.