Turkey, February 8th, doctors discover a 23 year-old man who suffers from dissociative identity disorder, depression and alcohol abuse. Apparently a case due to traumatic experiences, but there were things yet to discover.
According to the medical report, the man has been described as what doctors claim to be a real-vampire. Is it possible that someone is addicted to blood? This man, whose name and hometown weren’t revealed, started by slicing his own arms, chest and belly and drinking his own blood from a glass. Seeing he didn’t have enough he started stabbing and biting others, ending up arrested several times.
The patient declares the compulsions to drink blood were “as urgent as breathing”. Doesn’t this remind you of nowadays films? Is vampirism going to become a new physiological disease?
This first known patient with “vampirism” is said to be a danger not only for society, but also for himself. Someone who drinks blood has the risk of suffering health problems like haemochromatosis or contracting blood-borne disease. What do you think should be done about this?
Vampirism is no laughing matter, it’s a reality. Experts affirm it could become more and more popular due to sagas like “Twilight”, do you think this is possible?
Probably this is just a case in a million. Do you really think people will randomly start drinking blood? Although people can start doing it there’s no way to stop it. On my opinion you have to have some mental illness to start drinking blood and people who can be capable of drinking blood can commit even worst atrocities. Had the problem been vampire movies there wouldn’t have been just one case. We have to look at a different level; the problem could be a rough childhood, a trauma or other factors that hadn’t been considered. I heard once about a teenager who slayed his mother with a katana because he had an obsession with final fantasy, a videogame. Probably if he hadn’t been obsessed with that videogame he would have been obsessed with some different game, film or similar. Likely that would have made him murder his mother. We have to think about other problems and try and spot people with personality problems that can lead us to serious problems. If we eradicate vampire movies, people with personality disorder will try to find another thing to hang on. The solution isn’t that but giving psychological treatment before they act.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I would like to say that this particular case has shocked me a lot as I had never contemplated the possibility of such a thing happening. I agree with Gonzalo about the fact of this behaviour being a direct consequence of some kind of traumatic experience in the past.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I would like to outline that if you have a relative which suffers from a psychological disease or that has mental health problems then, I personally think, that the people who care for him should adopt some type of prevention measures in order to avoid the individual of being misleaded by the information or images he/she might see in certain movies. So, to a certain extent, this type of “vampire” behaviour could be caused by an irresponsibility not of the person but the ones who look after him. Nevertheless, I think we should not blame the producers of such films as they really are not creating films with this intention or enhancing people to start cutting parts of their body and drinking blood.
Moreover, this kind of behaviour is clearly a mental disorder which could be solved through psychological treatment and allow me to say that this is a particular case which probably will have occurred on its own. It’s definitely a foregone conclusion to say that these vampire films are not engaging people to drink blood and that the part of population who could be influenced negatively by these sources of entertainment should be kept far away from them.
As Gonzalo quite good explains, I think that this is a very particular case because I haven’t seen anybody in my life that has this or a similar problem. I think that, as we are human people we need different type of food for maintaining our skin in good conditions, we can’t eat just blood because that doesn’t proportionate all the goods that we need, as proteins, vitamins, milk and lots of other things.
ReplyDeleteOf course, this case reminds me to all the films that are very common nowadays, such as Twilight and all the films of this collection, for that reason I think that all this might be fiction and not a reality situation. Although in the films vampirism is a quite interesting theme, as I said this is a fictitious theme, not a real one, so my opinion is that vampirism will never exist or would never be a physiological problem or disease.
If in reality something of this type is happening, I think that we should do something immediately, because this is not normal. We have to make something for stopping it and the only solution I can see for this is making a special treatment to people that have this problem. Eating your blood is just disgusting and not normal but it is even worst eating somebody else blood, for that reason we would have to start thinking about one proper solution.
That’s very crazy Ariadna! I would never have thought about vampires existence; moreover, nowadays vampire films are very common among young people. Some popular vampire films like Twilight or TV shows such as True blood, Vampire Diaries, etc that have a big audience and maybe this will be affecting how people think about vampires.
ReplyDeleteThis man might have been watching lots of TV shows or films about vampires, and finally their behavior was normal for him and he managed to behave like them. There are other examples where this happens. For example, a child dressed up as Superman and jumped from his roof believing that he would fly like the protagonist of the film, but obviously he didn’t. The point is that the child believed that the film was real and that he could do it himself.
Another reason for the Turkish man’s behavior might be insanity. He is attacking people on the street to bite them and drink their blood. Apart from being unhealthy this is not normal because liking to hurt people is not mentally healthy.
We can’t blame movies and television for all interest in vampirism. You have to know that this is not the first real case about vampirism. Elisabeth Báthory, a Hungarian countess who lived betwen 1560 to 1614, killed hundreds of young girls that had to be virgins to bath her skin and then drink their blood to keep herself looking younger.
To conclude, I think that he is probably just crazy and that he needs professional help to stop drinking blood.
Victoria Huguet
After reading this article about a 23 year-old man addicted to blood I was fascinated by the fact that he harmed himself (sliced his own arms, chest and belly) to satisfy his need of blood drinking. When thinking about “can someone be addicted to blood” I must say that I would have never imagined it but it seems that the man mentioned in the article is actually addicted to it. Additionally he suffers from a dissociative identity disorder which makes him believe that he is a real vampire, this affects him psychologically to the point of feeling the need of drinking blood and as a consequence drinking his own blood from a glass. I hope that this peculiar mental illness doesn’t arrive to the extent of cannibalism.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think vampirism will be a new psychological disease but I don’t discount the fact that people with personality disorders can be influenced by the actual films, books and series and consequently have “vampiric” behaviors. We don’t have to forget that in this particular case many serious problems act together; alcohol abuse, traumas from the past and an identity disorder which leads to his uncommon way of acting.
I personally think that this rare conduct caused by psychological problems should have been treated immediately since the first manifestations such as the first time he was arrested for biting and stabbing others. I don’t think the number of people suffering from “vampirism“ will increase as the vampire trend is temporal and won’t last forever.