transabled.org

The fact is, we dont’ know enough. We need to know more.

And whether it is or isn’t a mental illness, I remain convinced that the *only* way we’ll see treatment protocols that really help us (such as possible surgery) is through the use of the mental illness label, at least while the condition gets accepted and known. Then later on it can get “readjusted” But that’s just me. ;)

“Attempting to ‘treat’ the mental state is inevitably unsuccessful. Our minds are far more fundamental to the core of our identity than our bodies are, and it is nearly impossible to overcome this to change a fundamental mental state. This has been shown repeatedly, in cases of various ‘identity disorders’. In short, there is no way to change the mental state, to bring it into alignment with the physical.”

We don’t know nearly enough to make such a sweeping, blanket, be-all-and-end-all statement. In various posts I’ve mentioned a few times a study being done on BIID by a neurologist/neuroscientist named Ramachandran. I have just recently read his book “A Brief Study of Human Consciousness.” In this book, he describes case studies of people with various kinds of odd, very rare body image disorders, and how they were treated. Many of them couldn’t be treated with psychology but could be treated neurologically. Many of them were treated with a combination of both. BIID isn’t mentioned in this book, but the disorders that Ramachandran did successfuly treat were similar enough to BIID that it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that BIID could be treated in a similar manner. The thing is, nobody has ever tried to treat BIID from a neurological point of view. Until they have, we can’t say “nothing works” because not everything has been tried.

That said, I do think that treatment protocols including surgery should be put into place as soon as possible to decrease the suffering of the currently transabled until science can catch up and offer the next generation of BIID suffers an effective remedy, at a young age, before it gets to the point of needing surgery.

A neurological condition is a physical one, not a mental one. A psychological condition is a mental one. The confusion of neurological disorder with mental illness has caused much suffering in epilepsy patients (among others) over the generations, and I wish to see the trend, of an ‘invisible’ physical/neurological condition having to pass through a phase of being labeled as ‘mental illness’ before being recognised for what it is, come to a stop. I will not condone such a misclassification, even for the most Machiavellian motives.

Kyla, I agree, a neurological condition is a physical one, not a mental one.

Do you have any convincing and irrefutable evidence that BIID is solely a neurological condition? I certainly don’t.

The fact is, there is some evidence that shows it is neurological, and there is some evidence that shows it is psychological. WE DON’T KNOW FOR SURE. That’s the bottom line.

I haven’t seen any evidence suggesting that it is a psychological one. Every time an attempt is made to treat it as a psychological one, the assumption is demonstrated to be false. I have yet to see a single exception. How many times does an experiment need to be repeated before the results are accepted?

In all honesty, after having read through this page and its comments (well I say read, I actually had the computer read them to me in a funny accent but that’s by the by) I think I’m sort of on the fence, in between the two camps.

I see two distinct camps here: one camp where they want BIID classified as a mental illness for whatever reason, and one camp where they want BIID not classified as a mental illness. As Sean has already pointed out, there isn’t enough evidence to determine either way which camp is ‘right’ as there’s not enough evidence to determine what BIID actually is.

This said, one has to question the validity of deciding without evidence that a condition is a mental illness. As the problem of GID being seen as a mental illness has shown, simply lumping BIID into the mental illness category without adequate reason will cause more problems in the long term than it would ever actually solve.

Isn’t it possible that what is called BIID is just the psychological result of a mismatch in what the “self” says the body should be like and what the body actually is? I don’t think it’s out of place to think of BIID as mental in origin, that is, the label BIID. That isn’t to say what causes the label is or is not psychological in origin; for all we know it could be purely physical and existing outside of the brain.

To call something ‘mental illness’ is to ensure that the condition will be eternally stigmatised by society, even generations after the erroneous label is removed. As such, a willingness to apply - or to accept - such a label without convincing evidence demonstrates a dangerous short-sightedness. Yes, in the short-term it *MAY* result in getting our condition recgonised and further studied; however, I feel that the long-term cost of having that condition eternally viewed as ‘A New Way To Be Mad’ (to borrow Elliott’s phrase) will be extremely detrimental to the community.

To be honest, even things that are CORRECTLY labelled as psychological disorders (e.g. Depression) carry the stigma of the ‘mental illness’ label, which is inevitably disproportionate to the ‘threat’ posed by the condition. Until this situation is corrected, I will resist the application of the term ‘mental illness’ to my condition.

One thing which is important to consider when talking about trying to fix the mental side of a discrepancy between physical form and mental image is that every single infinitesimal detail of your mind’s inner working is part of what makes you yourself.

If they ever did come up with a way to alter the brain to fit the body then we’d be changing a person’s identity. Who are we to say what is a disorder and what is a valid part of someone’s individuality?

The line has to be drawn somewhere for what we can treat, and keep in mind that some people would draw that line a long time before the ‘treatment’ of homosexuality or even using such methodology to change people’s religious beliefs to match a national standard.

Nobody has the right to mess with what makes us who we are.

Stacy, I agree with what you say. But the thing is, I’m *not* saying that because BIID is (IMHO) a mental illness, that the cure has to be one addressing the brain. The solution to this particular MI is physical :)

Dr. First’s research did not show that psychotherapy was not effective. It showed that nobody was treating BIID, specifically. Because there is anecdotal evidence that psychotherapy is not helpful, there may be scores of people NOT going into psychotherapy because they think it couldn’t possibly work for them…when it’s quite possible that, if aimed correctly, it might. Who is to tell? All people with BIID were not created equally and someone may respond where another did not. Gender Identity Disorder is not “cured” with surgery 100% of the time. In fact, many people choose not to have surgery, others learn to cope with the feelings, and some individuals grow out of them (children, generally). So…following the idea that BIID is similarly a discrepancy between the body and the body image, I tend to think that having an all-or-nothing ideology about it is just not helpful.

And…”mental states” change all the time. Identities do as well, at times. Body image can change, but it usually takes time, as in the case of someone with anorexia nervosa.

Amanda