Posted by In 2015 Jewel Shuping, a 30-year-old from North Carolina, said in a Barcroft TV video that she had a psychologist deliberately blind her because she has body integrity identity disorder. Her story went around the world, but it has never been independently verified and several details don’t add up.
Jewel Shuping is a woman who says she decided to become blind and had her eyes deliberately damaged. She has body integrity identity disorder and says that now, blind, she is happy.
Jewel Shuping’s story
Jewel, 30, says she always dreamed of being blind, ever since she was a child. When she was 3 or 4, her mother would find her wandering around the house at night in total darkness. At six came her first conscious thought: being blind would make her feel at ease. When her mother warned her that looking directly at the sun could hurt her eyes, the little girl spent hours staring at it, hoping to go blind.
Body integrity identity disorder is a condition in which sufferers feel that a limb or a sense is not part of them and that they should lose it.
As a teenager Jewel began wearing thick dark glasses, and at 18 she got her first white cane. Her desire to be blind also led her to learn braille, which she could read fluently by the age of 20.
Pretending is no longer enough
For years Jewel pretended to be blind, but that was no longer enough. The idea that she had to be truly blind kept coming back. So she began talking to psychologists, who diagnosed the disorder. But Jewel realised they were not helping her: she did not want to accept her condition, she wanted to become blind.
The blindness
According to her account, she eventually found a psychologist willing to help her, who put a corrosive chemical in her eyes. Jewel remembers the excruciating pain, but says she felt no remorse. Afterwards she was taken to hospital, where doctors, against her wishes, tried to save her sight.
The next morning she woke up and opened her eyes: instead of darkness, she saw her TV screen, as always. That made her immensely angry. But her sight declined over the following months until she was completely blind, as she wanted. Later one of her eyes also had to be removed because of the damage.
Her life as a blind woman
Jewel now says she feels complete and happy and is studying for a degree in education. At first she told her family that her blindness had been caused by an accident, but her relatives found out the truth and stopped speaking to her. Jewel does not regret it, because she is convinced she should have been born blind. But she urges anyone with the same disorder not to do what she did and to seek help.
A true story?
There is more than one reason to take this story with a pinch of salt. As the fact-checking site Snopes noted, all the articles published in 2015 were based on a single Barcroft TV video, with no independent verification. The date doesn’t add up either: the video says 2006, but according to Snopes a 2008 message posted on an online forum on Jewel’s behalf said she had had an “accident” to her eyes on 28 June 2008. And in an April 2015 report by a North Carolina TV station, the woman used a different name, Amber, and described her blindness as an accident.
Jewel has never named the psychologist who supposedly helped her, and we don’t know whether anyone was ever investigated. Perhaps only she knows what really happened.
Body integrity identity disorder is a real and serious condition. If you recognise yourself in this story or are having thoughts of harming yourself, talk to a doctor or psychologist, or contact a helpline in your country (you can find one at findahelpline.com). In an emergency, call your local emergency number.
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