What To Understand About People Who Enjoy BDSM
Recently, researchers at several institutions including Northern Illinois University surveyed experienced BDSM players to determine how bondage, discipline, and sado-masochism sessions affected them. The kinksters showed no negative effects at all. Instead, they reported a pleasantly altered state of consciousness similar to what people experience during other enjoyable activities — a mindset involving reduced stress, a more positive outlook on life, and increased sexual arousal. The researchers concluded that far from threatening mental health, BDSM actually contributes to it.
The new study is just one of many over the past 25 years to show that BDSM players have no psychological problems unique to their kinky play, and are no more likely than the general population to suffer from psychiatricproblems:
- Italian researchers surveyed the sexuality of 266 Italian men and women, aged 18 to 74, who were involved in BDSM. The researchers also surveyed 200 demographically similar men and women who did not play that way. The two groups reported similar feelings about their sexuality, but the BDSM players reported less sexual distress and greater erotic satisfaction. The researchers said they hoped their study would “reduce the stigma associated with BDSM.”
- A Los Angeles investigator administered standard psychological tests to several hundred BDSM aficionados and concluded they were mentally healthy.
- Australian researchers surveyed 19,370 Aussies aged 16 to 59. Of the 2.2 percent of men and 1.3 percent of women who called themselves committed to BDSM, all tested psychologically healthy and reported no disproportionate history of childhood sex abuse or any sexual trauma.
- Northern Illinois University scientists took before-and-after saliva samples from 58 BDSM players, measuring their levels of the stress hormone cortisol. After BDSM scenes, their cortisol levels decreased significantly. BDSM play reduced their stress.
- Dutch researchers gave standard personality tests to 902 BDSM players and 434 controls. The same proportions of both groups tested psychologically healthy. Overall, the kinksters were “less neurotic, more conscientious, more extraverted, more open to new experiences, less sensitive to rejection, and showed greater subjective well-being.” Those who scored most mentally healthy were the doms, followed by the subs, and in last place, the conventionally sexual (vanilla) controls.
- Researchers at Idaho State University asked 935 kinksters what BDSM meant to them. The top answers were personal freedom (90 percent), adventure (91 percent), self-expression (91 percent), stress relief (91 percent), positive emotions (97 percent), and above all, pleasure (99 percent).
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