[2] Some become somewhat more comfortable with their own bodies by pretending they are amputees using prostheses and other tools to help their dysphoria, by using a wheelchair or by blocking their vision or hearing.
Some people with BID have reported to the media or by interview with researchers that they have resorted to self-amputation of a "superfluous" limb by, for example, allowing a train to run over it or otherwise damaging it so severely that surgeons will have to amputate it.
[9] However a small sample of people with body integrity dysphoria connected to their left leg have had MRI scans that showed less gray matter in the right side of their superior parietal lobule.
The disturbance is not better accounted for by another mental, behavioural or neurodevelopmental disorder, by a Disease of the Nervous System or by another medical condition, or by Malingering."
[6][12][13] Outcomes of treated and untreated BID are not known; there are numerous case reports that amputation permanently resolves the desire in affected individuals.
[15] The condition received public attention in the late 1990s after Scottish surgeon Robert Smith amputated limbs of two otherwise healthy people who were desperate to have this done.
[15] In 2004 Michael First published the first clinical research in which he surveyed fifty-two people with the condition, a quarter of whom had undergone an amputation.