What is Boanthropy?
Boanthropy – one of the most unusual and uncommon mental illnesses. But what is boanthropy really?
Definition of Boanthropy
Boanthropy is a psychological disorder that causes a person to believe they are an ox, cow, or generally of the bovine species. These individuals believe this to the extent of adopting bovine behaviours such as walking on all fours and eating grass.
…a little more info please?
Boanthropy is most closely related to schizophrenia in that the human is in a delusional state, however, unlike with schizophrenia, sufferers tend to maintain this state for a significant period of time.
Although an incredibly rare and subsequently poorly researched disorder it is believed that talk therapy and counselling are the best we currently have to offer individuals that suffer from boanthropy. The success rate for curing this mental illness is unknown and likely to remain that way as the numbers just don’t allow for much research or time being put into it.
History of boanthropy
The earliest and most well known case of boanthropy appears in the bible. An individual by the name of Nebuchadnezzar spent seven years believing he was an ox and acting accordingly. This text can be found fully in the Book of Daniel.
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To be fully honest, I have never come across this term or this illness in my entire life.
In general, I feel like we have recently been seeing more weird mental illnesses that have little to no record in the books of history. Why do you think that’s the case? Could it be that medicine was not well equipped to identify such mental impairments?
If you ask me, I think it’s because people were too busy. Nowadays, many people have a lot of time on their hands and we start seeing these weird mental illnesses come out of the blue.
Hi Yusuf,
I imagine they were likely always there and we are just better educated to be able to diagnose them now. It is quite rare so not unlikely that most people have not heard of, and will likely never encounter it.