Dad begs doctors to cut off his hand as he feels he's 'supposed to be disabled'

05 November 2023 , 07:19

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The anonymous Sydney dad spoke about his struggles with the disorder

A dad suffering from a rare disorder is begging for doctors to cut off his hand - because he feels it doesn't belong on his body.

Body integrity dysphoria (also known as body integrity identity disorder, and sometimes apotemnophilia) is a mental condition that sees sufferers experience a strong discomfort with their physical state, and a desire to become disabled in some form. It usually takes the form of wanting to amputate a limb or to become blind or deaf. People with BID feel disconnected to their able-bodied selves and believe they were meant to have a certain disability - and will go to extreme lengths to make it a reality.

People with the disorder are often desperate for amputation (Getty Images)

A married father-of-two from Sydney, Australia recently revealed his quest for amputation and explained his experience. "My left hand does not belong, it has been that way my entire life," the anonymous man told current affairs show The Project on Wednesday. "Even wind blowing on my hand stops me doing whatever I'm doing... I used to forge notes from my mother to get out of sports [in school] if I had to use my hand."

He admitted he once tried to chop off his hand to relieve the discomfort, but "only got part way before the pain got too much". Three years ago he was approved for an amputation - but Australia's Covid lockdown saw the surgery cancelled. Now the only surgeon willing to perform the operation has retired, meaning the dad's only hope is to go private which will cost thousands.

Robert Vickers had his leg amputated at the age of 41

Another Australian man named Robert Vickers suffered from the same desire to remove his left leg from the age of 10, and tried a number of ways to damage the limb over the years. At the age of 41 he used dry ice to hurt his leg so severely that surgeons had no choice but to amputate it, and Mr Vickers described the feeling of waking up in hospital without it as "absolute ecstasy".

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In 2015 an American woman named Jewel Shuping made headlines when she revealed she'd persuaded a psychologist to pour drain cleaner in her eyes. She'd been plagued by an intense desire to be blind since the age of six, when she would spend hours staring directly at the sun in the hopes it would damage her eyesight. Ms Shuping said she had been diagnosed with BID and had been wearing dark glasses, using a cane and reading braille for years before she was blinded.

Jewel Shuping blinded herself with drain cleaner (Barcroft Media/ YouTube)

One famous case was that of Rowland Bowen, a renowned cricket historian who used a hacksaw, a hammer and a chisel to remove his perfectly healthy right leg in 1968. The 52-year-old's self-amputation made news around the world, but the man himself couldn't understand the fuss. "Why it would have been regarded as anything of importance to anyone else I do not know," he wrote to a friend. He never explained why he did it.

BID continues to baffle experts and little is known about why some people develop the disorder. Most patients start to exhibit symptoms between eight and 12 years of age, and many of them had known a person with an amputated limb as a child. There is currently no evidence-based treatment for the disorder, and the ethics of providing amputation for patients remains controversial.

Sophie Bateman