Do No Harm: Why do some people want to cut off a perfectly healthy limb?

Do No Harm: Why do some people want to cut off a perfectly healthy limb?Body dysmorphohobic disorder ( ICD 10 F45.2 ) can occur as a disorder on its own or as a symptom of other disorders e.g. depression. It’s defined as:

A type of mental illness, a somatoform disorder, wherein the affected person is concerned with body image, manifested as excessive concern about and preoccupation with a perceived defect of their physical features. The person thinks they have a defect in either one feature or several features of their body, which causes psychological distress that causes clinically significant distress or impairs occupational or social functioning. Often BDD co-occurs with depression and anxiety, social withdrawal or social isolation.

Website Matter have opened up for general reading an article about a person with this disorder which is well worth a read.

Incidentally, I was attached to the Scottish surgeon mentioned in the piece when I was a medical student and then returned to work for him in my first house job.

A Scottish surgeon named Robert Smith, who practised at the Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary, briefly held out legal hope for BIID sufferers by openly performing voluntary amputations, but a media frenzy in 2000 led British authorities to forbid such procedures.

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