Bondage Benefits: BDSM

BDSM: Healthier Than 'Vanilla' People?

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

Date: 29 May 2013 Time: 03:27 PM ET

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A pair of handcuffs. CREDIT: Norebbo, Shutterstock View full size image

Despite the fact that their sexual preferences are listed in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as potentially problematic, people who play with whips and chains in the bedroom may actually be more psychologically healthy than those who don't.
A new study finds that practitioners of bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism, or BDSM, score better on a variety of personality and psychological measures than "vanilla" people who don't engage in unusual sex acts. BDSM is a sexual practice that revolves around those four fetishes.
BDSM is listed in the DSM-5, the newest edition of the definitive psychiatrist's manual, as a paraphilia, or unusual sexual fixation — a label that has caused controversy between kinky communities and psychiatrists, who themselves are mixed on whether sexual predilections belong in the catalog of mental disorders. As written, the DSM-5 does not label BDSM a disorder unless it causes harm to the practitioner or to others. [Hot Stuff? 10 Unusual Sexual Fixations]

Kinky controversy
Nevertheless, some psychiatrists see the inclusion of BDSM and other kinks in the manual as stigmatizing, particularly because studies have failed to show evidence that enjoying sex with a side of pain is linked to psychological problems. The new study, published May 16 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, finds that, in fact, BDSM practitioners may be better off psychologically than the general public.

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