On August 21, 2013, Sex and Psychology published "Are People Who Practice BDSM Psychologically Disturbed?" The figures, sample notes, and methods in that column stay on that page. This article does not copy them and does not add a new survey. It explains what a stigma headline can and cannot do for an adult who practices, who is curious, or who is tired of being called sick for a consensual sex life.
What a stigma headline cannot decide
- A column can answer an insult. It cannot clear you, your partner, or a guest at the door.
- A group score is not a portrait of the person standing in front of you.
- A kink event is not a clinic. Hosts do not diagnose, and guests do not owe a diagnosis to enter.
- Distress still needs care. In the United States, call or text 988 if you are in crisis.
- Consent rules do not relax because a questionnaire made a group look steady.
The paper this argument usually means
When people argue about whether kink means someone is disturbed, they often reach for one paper. Andreas A. J. Wismeijer and Marcel A. L. M. van Assen published it in the Journal of Sexual Medicine in 2013. They compared 902 BDSM practitioners with 434 controls using online questionnaires. Those two counts are part of the public description of that paper. This page does not add other counts, percentages, or later replications.
On those questionnaires, the BDSM group scored less neurotic, more extraverted, more open, and more conscientious. The same group scored less agreeable, less rejection sensitive, and higher on subjective well-being. Those are differences on paper-and-pencil style measures, collected online. They are not a medical exam, a brain scan, or a character reference you can wave at a partner.
What the authors did not prove
The sample was not a random sample of any country. People who find an online questionnaire about BDSM and choose to finish it can differ from people who never tell a researcher anything. A reader cannot treat the result as a portrait of every adult who has tied a knot, given a spanking, or used a collar in private.
The paper is not proof that kink treats depression. A difference in average well-being scores does not mean a scene is therapy. It does not mean a person with depression will improve if they add power exchange. It does not mean a person who scored well is protected from harm inside a bad dynamic. If you want care for depression, anxiety, grief, or trauma, use a clinician. A kink-aware therapist is someone you can seek on purpose. A party host is not that person.
The authors described recreational leisure rather than psychopathology. That wording pushes back on the old habit of filing consensual kink under illness by default. It does not say every scene is kind, skilled, or wanted. Leisure can still be careless. A hobby label is not a safety plan.
Dominants, submissives, and false ranking
Where the groups differed, dominants tended to score more favorably than submissives. That is a tendency inside that dataset. It is not a reason to treat dominants as the healthy ones and submissives as a clinical problem. Role is not a diagnosis. A submissive who likes clear orders can be steady and well supported. A dominant who looks favorable on a personality inventory can still ignore a stop word.
Do not use the tendency as a boast, a sorting tool, or a reason to dismiss a submissive partner's distress. If someone is hurting, the score pattern is irrelevant. Ask what they need. End the scene if they want it to end. Do not tell them the literature says their role is the fragile one, and do not tell them the literature says they should be fine.
People also switch roles, refuse those labels, or do service and rope with no sexual contact at all. A binary chart from one paper will misfile them. If the question is whether a practice is sexual for the people in it, negotiate that directly. A later practical page, is BDSM always about sex, separates sex from rope, service, and impact. The 2013 paper is not that negotiation.
Disorder language, kept narrow
Consensual BDSM is not by itself a paraphilic disorder in the DSM. In that framework, disorder requires distress or harm, including nonconsent. Enjoying negotiated power, bondage, or impact with another adult is not the same sentence as a diagnosis. The reverse matters too. A diagnosis, if a person has one, is not erased because their sex life includes kink.
Nonconsent is harm. Pressure, surprise, and the claim that a collar already answered every future question are not consent. Read consent practices before you treat any column as a green light. If a partner uses kink words to control money, friends, sleep, medical care, or contact with the outside world outside any agreement, that pattern is abuse. The National Domestic Violence Hotline in the United States is 1-800-799-7233. Partner abuse in kink communities names patterns that are not "just the dynamic."
Stigma in ordinary rooms
Stigma shows up in small sentences. A relative says you are sick. A clinician flinches and changes the subject. A volunteer at a venue assumes the quiet person in a collar needs rescuing, or assumes the person holding a leash is dangerous on sight. None of those reactions is an assessment. None of them replaces a question asked to the adult in front of you.
You do not owe strangers a speech about the 2013 paper. If you want a short reply, you can say that consensual adult kink is not a disorder by itself, that one questionnaire study is not a treatment study, and that you will not argue about your private life at a family table. Then stop. Winning the debate is optional. Your privacy is not.
Inside a public play space, the useful rule is simpler than the paper. Adults only. Minors are never participants, never an audience for explicit play, and never a party to sexual negotiation. House rules still bind you if your inventory scores look excellent on paper. Skill, sobriety agreements, and a working stop word are local duties. A journal article does not staff the dungeon.
How to talk with a clinician
If you want therapy, name the problem you want help with. Depression, panic, grief, and fear in a relationship are clinical topics. A spanking you both wanted last Saturday may be context, not the illness. A kink-aware clinician can hear the context without treating the kink as the diagnosis. Our notes on finding a kink-aware therapist cover what to ask before the first session and what a poor fit sounds like.
Bring the paper only if it helps you correct a myth a previous clinician repeated. Do not bring it as proof that you cannot be depressed. Adults who practice BDSM can have the same mental health conditions as anyone else. The study's averages do not cancel a person's symptoms, and they do not obligate you to disclose kink before you are ready.
If a clinician says that any BDSM means you are disordered, you can ask them to separate consensual adult activity from distress and from harm. If they refuse to treat your actual symptoms unless you quit a consensual sex life, you can look for someone else. If you are in immediate danger from yourself, call or text 988 before you spend the night comparing clinicians.
What not to do with the column
Do not quote it at a partner who wants to stop. "The research says practitioners are fine" is not an answer to "I am done for tonight." Stop means stop. Myths beginners still hear include the idea that a study can outrank a person's no.
Do not quote it to skip aftercare, medical care, or a check-in. A higher average well-being score in a sample does not close a cut, settle a panic spike, or justify a bruise nobody agreed to. Do not quote the paper to a minor. Do not involve anyone under 18 in play, in sexual roles, or in talk that treats them as a participant.
Do not teach choking, breath play, fire, needles, suspension, or sex with a sleeping person from this page or from a stigma column. Those subjects are outside this article on purpose. Impact and breath restriction are different acts. If your interest is pain that stays inside an agreement, start with masochism in plain language, and still negotiate the specific act with the other adult.
Shame, privacy, and the room you are in
Shame grows when a headline says "disturbed" and the reader fills in the worst private fear. The remedy here is narrow. Read the August 21, 2013 column for what it points to. Read the Wismeijer and van Assen paper if you want the methods. Then come back to the person you are with and ask three concrete questions: what do you want, what do you refuse, and what will we do if either of us says stop.
You do not have to disclose kink to relatives, employers, or a new clinician on the first handshake. Disclosure is a choice with consequences. Stigma is real, and so is the right to keep a sex life private. If secrecy is the tool someone uses to trap you, that is a different problem from stigma, and the abuse hotline above is the better resource.
Leisure is also not an identity verdict. The 2013 authors described what they studied as recreational leisure rather than psychopathology. Whether you treat kink as leisure, as identity, or as both is a separate question, discussed on kink, orientation, and leisure. A paper does not vote on your label. Your partner does not inherit a duty to play because you picked a label.
A practical close
Use the Sex and Psychology column from August 21, 2013 as a pointer against a blanket insult. Use the Wismeijer and van Assen paper as one questionnaire comparison: 902 practitioners, 434 controls, not a random sample, not a treatment study, with dominants tending to score more favorably than submissives where the groups differed. Use a therapist for illness. Use 988 for a crisis. Use 1-800-799-7233 if a partner is harming you. Use consent for play. Those jobs do not swap.
If the next thing you need is beginner language, start with consent and with the myth page linked above. If the next thing you need is care, call a clinician or 988. Leave the personality scores on the study. They were never a manual for your scene.