Grey’s Anatomy Has Enraged Me Again
October 26, 2007 by Alicia Sparks, Mental Health Notes
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
Did anyone watch Grey’s Anatomy last night?
If you know me outside of Mental Health Notes, you know that I’m a huge Grey’s Anatomy fan – or, I was, until the whole Isaiah Washington/T.R. Knight thing couldn’t be resolved without dragging the public into it and abc ultimately giving Washington to the boot. Oh, add to that the fact that Addison left, Geroge and Izzie make me sick, and if Derek and Meredith never get together I couldn’t care less now, and you have the makings for why I’m not that huge of a fan anymore.
But, I digress.
If you watched Grey’s Anatomy last night, you undoubtedly noticed the storyline of the man who wanted to amputate his foot – so badly that he stole a chainsaw and began the process himself. Unfortunately, this storyline gave me yet another reason to be mad at Grey’s Anatomy.
This man was clearly dealing with some mental issues. To decide that a perfectly good body part you’ve had all your life is suddenly not yours and you must have it removed? This man – this character – needed to be referred to a mental health care professional. He was in a hospital for crying out loud – get him into a psychiatrist’s office!
But, the writers of GA didn’t write him into a psychiatrist’s office. Instead, they had Dr. Baily do the writing – they had her haphazardly write him a prescription for “anti-anxiety medication” and send him on his way.
No explanation of anything – not even a bare bones description of potential side effects.
So, what does the man do? He hangs around in the ER, finds a chainsaw, and begins amputating his own foot.
Now, I understand this is a TV show. It’s TV. I get it. However, Grey’s Anatomy has spent 3 1/2 seasons now building a reputation of dealing with real-life issues and real-life medical conditions. Heck, abc.com used to have a section dedicated to explaining the medical conditions featured on the show.
For those of you who are saying, “But Alicia, the show had a theme. It was all about people sending people away, or putting people on hold, while they went off to deal with something else, rather than dealing with the serious issues that were right in front of them,” I get that, too. (Hello – Alex with Norman and Ava, Meredith and her mother in a jar in the back of her closet – I get it.)
However, instead of letting the doctors – and Seattle Grace – rectify their mistake, they show us Cristina rolling the man down the hallway calling him “crazy.”
RRAAHHHHH!!
In my completely unprofessional opinion, it sounds as if this man was suffering from Body Integrity Identity Disorder, also known as Amputee Identity Disorder, and formerly called apotemnophilia.
But, we got “crazy,” instead.
Thanks, Shonda Rhimes, and the rest of the Grey’s Anatomy writers.
In any event, if you’d like to learn more about Amputee Identity Disorder, check out these links:
- Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) – A wikipedia article (unfortunately, I can’t find much about the condition on any medical Web sites).
- What Drives People to Want to Be Amputees? – A news report from abcnews.go.com.
- Costing an Arm and a Leg – A documentary from slate.com.
- A collection of links regarding Body Integrity Identity Disorder.
I haven’t had a chance to see the episode, as I’m not in the US and it hasn’t reached us yet. As someone who suffers from BIID, I always am interested to see what the media does with “my” condition. More times than not, they get it wrong.
FWIW, talk therapy of all types, including cognitive behavioural therapy just doesn’t work on BIID. Prescribed drugs and medications also don’t work on BIID. In fact, the only thing that works on BIID at this point is for the concerned individual to acquire the impairment they need. I should point out that BIID sufferer may need to be paralysed, blind or deaf, as well as amputees.
You may also want to visit http://biid-info.org for more information about BIID, including the collection of nearly all published research and academic journal articles regarding BIID.
Several years ago I watched something (I don’t know if it was a documentary or talk show or what) about BIID. I’d briefly thought about it from time to time, and I’m thankful the GA episode sparked a memory so I could post this, and you could find it and comment – so much I didn’t know about it!
Thank you so much for chiming in. I’d like to do an update to this post, to point readers to this Web site and your comment – would you mind that?
P.S. abc.com allows viewers to watch the episodes online; however, my mom has several fellow GA fans who live outside the US and aren’t able to access those shows, so I don’t know if you’d be able to but I wanted to throw it out there.
Another P.S.
If I remember correctly, I saw an Oprah show back in…2004 or 2005, featuring a lady who was obsessed with plastic surgery, altering her appearance until she got it “just right,” etc. When she looked in the mirror, she never saw what others saw. (For example, this lady was seriously beautiful, but dangerously thin, and saw herself as ugly and fat.) Now, like I said, if I remember correctly on the show they referred to this as BIID. Does this sound right? From what I’ve read thus far, it doesn’t, but I have no experience or prior education of this.
Hello Alicia, I don’t mind at all if you do updates or spread awareness about BIID. In fact, the more aware people are, and of proper facts, rather than improper understandings, the better things are
There is a “problem” with biid.org – it has not been updated in years, and it focuses only on people requiring amputations. At the time that site was setup, non-amputee BIID sufferers were almost unheard of, but we now know better. http://biid-info.org was setup with a view to inform people about BIID, with the most up to date information possible. For the benefit the medical community, researchers, BIID sufferers as well as their loved ones and the general public 
You may also be interested in http://transabled.org a blog that discusses BIID from BIID sufferers. I am the main contributor, but there are many other authors as well. Bit more of the “personal” side of BIID, as opposed to http://biid-info.org which is more “neutral” and “clinical”.
Unfortunately, ABC.com is rather US centric and anyone that doesn’t have a US based IP address is unable to view the episodes
The lady you mention that was on Oprah, sounds like Body Dysmorphic Disorder, which is quite different from Body Integrity Identity Disorder. Perhaps one of the major difference is that in BDD, people have an erroneous perception of their body, whereas for BIID sufferers, we are well aware that our body are “normal”, but there is a dichotomy between our body image/map and our physical body.
Please feel free to contact me directly through the contact form at http://transabled.org/contact if you want to discuss this more in depth. I can also often be reached on Yahoo! Messenger with the handle of wylz
Awesome – thanks so much for your help, Sean! And they probably did call it BDD, it would be easy for me to confuse the letters!
Hello Alicia
I’m Lily from the ABC Primetime show “What Drives People to Want to Be Amputees?”
You are welcome to get in touch with me