Psychologist intentionally blinds their client who asked for it

[buttons]

A woman who dreamed of being blind arranged to have drain cleaner poured in her eyes to fulfil her wishes. Jewel Shuping, 30, from North Carolina has Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), a condition in which able-bodied people believe they are meant to be disabled.
Her desire to lose her sight was so strong that she decided to blind herself - by having a sympathetic psychologist pour drain cleaner into her eyes.
Ms Shuping said her fascination with blindness began early in childhood.


'My mother would find me walking in the halls at night, when I was three or four years old,' she said.
'By the time I was six I remember that thinking about being blind made me feel comfortable.'
As a child, she would spend hours staring at the sun, watching sunspots and solar storms after her mother told her it would damage her eyes.
When she was a teenager she started wearing thick black sunglasses and got her first white cane aged 18 before becoming fully fluent in braille by the age of 20.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3256029/Woman-dreamed-blind-DRAIN-CLEANER-poured-eyes-fulfil-lifelong-wish-says-happier-ever.html#ixzz3nK0FzluA

Body Integrity Identity Disorder


According to BIID.org, Body Integrity Identity Disorder is when a person’s idea of how they should look does not match their physical form.
The condition affects a small percentage of the population and is most often manifested by a desire to have an amputation of a specific body part.
Usually, the limb that the person would like to remove is actually in healthy working order and there are no physical problems with it.
The leading thought by psychologists and neurologists is that Body Integrity Identity Disorder, or BIID, occurs when the brain is not able to provide an accurate plan of the body.
The brain sees the offending limb as being foreign and not actually a part of the person, thus the desire to have it removed.
In the most severe cases, a person with BIID may do bodily harm to what that they would like to have removed, to necessitate an operation.
Others manage to cope with the illness by using canes and prosthetic attachments to help them feel complete.

what do you guys think about the psychologist doing this?

[Kyle]

It could've been done a different and less dangerous way surely but welp seems perfectly okay to me if there is no other way for the person to feel complete. Seems like a similar situation to be in to transgender people who undergo operations.

[Hannah]

She kind of has a huge dedication, shown in her lifetime, towards being blind.

However, as Kyle mentioned there are safer ways to do it. Also, of all the people to do it - why on Earth did the psychologist do it?

Was the reason she was seeing the psychologist to study her BIID? That didn't really give him any right (though she requested) to act upon her desires.

I don't know - it's a bit like Euthanasia. It's all well and good if someone in their right mind wishes to die in my opinion, the help for that should not be illegal. But considering the reason she desired it was because of a mental disorder, does that really put her in the right state of mind?

Then again, it could also be argued as Kyle said in the same way as knowing you are really the opposite gender to how you were born.

I'm kind of back-and-forthing in the middle of how it should have been handled, however I don't feel the psychologist should have done it.

[-:Undertaker:-]

In more sane times, people like her were locked in an asylum for their own safety and that of everybody else.

Now she'll probably be hailed as a hero. A intentionally blind disorder liberator or something. LGBTIBL+.

[FlyingJesus]

Truly hilarious it's nothing like transgender because neither male or female are disabilities, this is quite simply extreme self harm. Being disabled isn't an identity, in the same way I doubt I could see this "psychologist" (read: enabler) and tell them I'm transfinancial, was meant to be a billionaire, and should be given all their money if they want to help me

[buttons]

yeah biid is a mental disorder, being transgender isn't. so it makes more sense to get to the root cause of the biid rather than "treat" her symptoms...

[Joe]

Literally who gives a ****. The lady wants to be someone she's not, so she's become that someone. It's EXACTLY like Euthanasia - someone want to die and the should have the right. I do agree, however, that there was safer ways to do it but them safer ways were probably not available to her because they would've been disallowed by health professionals as such.

Yes, it's a bit random but it's not weird - it's her choice and if that's her decision thats it. There's so much religious rubbish that gets in the way nowadays. People really need to get in touch with the fact people want to and WILL live the lives they want.

[Lewis]

It's a bit strange and I don't think the psychologist should've done it.

However, if she's happy to be like that and she's obviously not harming anyone else, then it doesn't really matter I guess. I just hope she doesn't regret it in the future.

[Inseriousity.]

Psychology is bound by strict ethics to avoid this sort of situation. If the woman harmed herself then fine, by sounds of it, it's almost inevitable but to have her psychologist facilitate it, that seems incompetent.

[Matthew]

imo the physcologist should not have done it

its really sad imo that a mental disorder brought her to wish to be blind, there's blind people who must wake up every single day willing to give anything to have the sight which this woman literally burned away. I'd never heard of the disorder though, sounds horrible :(