Norwegian without a handicap voluntarily uses a wheelchair because she identifies as a handicapped person
Created: 12/06/2022, 2:00 p.m
By: Juliane Gutmann
An accident or a congenital handicap are usually the reason why people are dependent on a wheelchair.
But there are also people who are healthy and still use a wheelchair - like Jørund Viktoria Alme from Oslo (symbolic picture).
© Imago
A trans woman from Oslo is physically healthy, but sees herself as a person with a disability.
She uses a wheelchair, which is polarizing on social media.
The thought of a life in a wheelchair is usually associated with fear for people without a handicap.
But they do exist: people who are physically healthy but still lead the life of a disabled person.
One of them is 53-year-old trans woman Jørund Viktoria Alme from Oslo, Norway.
Alme explained in an interview conducted in October during the Norwegian TV show God Morgen Norge that she does not see herself as a healthy man.
Rather, she identifies with the role of a woman who is paralyzed from the waist down.
Alme always wished she had been born a woman with a handicap, reported the senior credit analyst at the Handelsbank in Oslo on the TV show.
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Desire for paraplegia in the context of a body integrity identity disorder
According to TV2, 53-year-old Jørund Viktoria Alme says that she voluntarily uses a wheelchair without having a disability.
According to the feminist portal
Reduxx
, Alme states that he suffers from a body integrity identity disorder (BID).
Doctors make this diagnosis when people have a pathological desire to acquire a physical disability such as paraplegia.
"It's a cognitive dissonance: the way I feel as a woman in a man's body, I feel like I should have been paralyzed from the waist down.
It's not about wanting to be a burden on society.
It's about the fact that the wheelchair is an aid for me to function in everyday life, both privately and professionally," says Alme from
reduxx.info
quoted.
Jørund polarizes Viktoria Alme with her statements in the TV interview.
This is also reflected in comments on the Internet.
Among other things, there are Twitter messages such as "He would have ended up in a psychiatric ward in the past" or Facebook comments such as "This woman does not need a wheelchair for her illness, but psychological help.
It is a mockery for all who met this fate".
The latter post was written by a man who is himself dependent on a wheelchair.
handle BID
According to a German study, people with Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID) have a strong desire for amputation (BID-A) or paralysis (BID-L).
As the research group headed by Nina Heinrichs from the Institute of Psychology at the University of Bremen informs, the BID phenomenon "is still too poorly scientifically substantiated" to derive concrete instructions for practical work with BID sufferers.
"The underlying mechanisms, which then lead to an understanding of the disorder and a process of change, have not yet been identified," the study concludes.
In extreme cases, the disorder can lead to those affected feeling so impaired in their identity that they consider amputation or even mutilate themselves, according to the Technical University of Braunschweig.
In the special outpatient clinic for body dysmorphic disorders at the TU Braunschweig, people with BID can find advice and support.
A new form of cognitive behavioral therapy is also currently being researched at the TU Braunschweig.
