'Vampires' keep doctors
in the dark for fear of stereotyping: study
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[July 08, 2015]
SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - It is not
easy being a vampire, and even harder to come out of the coffin to a
physician or therapist for fear they will misinterpret the habit of
ingesting the blood of willing donors or succumb to stereotyping, a
study finds.
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Research led by D.J. Williams, director of social work at Idaho
State University, indicated that people who identify themselves as
“real” vampires – that is, needing others’ blood to gain energy –
would not disclose their practices to those in the helping
professions and risk reactions like ridicule, disgust and possible
diagnosis of a mental illness.
The paper, published in the latest issue of Critical Social Work, a
peer-reviewed journal based in Canada, found that authentic vampires
as opposed to “lifestyle” vampires – black-clad figures with phony
fangs – might be stereotyped by clinicians whose fields discourage
biases.
Williams, who has studied self-identified vampires for nearly a
decade, finds they come from every walk of life and profession,
including doctors, attorneys and candlestick makers.
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“They are successful, ordinary people,” he said.
Except they are very, very tired. That’s apparently the chief reason
they find a consenting adult willing to allow them to use a scalpel
to make a tiny incision in the chest area so they can ingest a small
amount of blood for energy, the study found.
Williams and another researcher based the paper on the responses of
11 people who had identified themselves as vampires for many years
and could be relied on to be open and honest, and who gain
permission from practicing adults before ingesting their blood, he
said.
“The real vampire community seems to be a conscientious and ethical
one,” Williams said.
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The challenge is finding non-judgmental clinicians to whom vampires
can disclose their alternative lifestyles, he added.
“Most vampires believe they were born that way; they don’t choose
this,” Williams said.
The global vampire population is thought to number in the thousands,
he said.
(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman in Salmon, Idaho; Editing by Dan
Whitcomb and Leslie Adler)
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