Congenital Insensitivity to Pain in Grey’s Anatomy By Laycee Pylant

Psychology Basis

Psychology Basis

•Congenital Insensitivity to Pain is defined as the inability to feel pain

•A condition in which a person has never and will never feel physical pain

Psychology Basis•Cognition and sensation are normal

•No physical abnormalities

•Often suffer from damage in the mouth (tip of the tongue bit off), broken bones, infections and diseases due to the fact that they cannot feel pain therefore they cannot respond with treatment

Media

Media•Grey’s Anatomy •Dr. Alex Karev is one of the 5 original interns from the beginning of the series

•Megan Clover is a patient that suffers from Congenital Insensitivity to Pain

Media•Megan Clover is in the hospital to get stiches in her leg

•Dr. Alex Karev notices bruises all over her body and sees that there are staples holding together a swollen wound on her arm and immediately thinks her parents are abusing her

Media•Megan claims that she fell off of her bike and stapled her arm herself because she didn’t want to go to the doctor again

Media•She tells Dr. Karev that she can’t be hurt when he says that he needs to give her a shot to numb the pain while he removes the staples from her arm

•She then proceeds to remove the staples from her arm herself as Dr. Karev watches in disbelief, and then she whispers to him that she has superpowers

Connection

Connection•The fact that Megan had so many bruises and wounds covering her body means that she gets hurt often but she doesn’t seem to be bothered by it whereas a person who feels pain would not be in a calm state like she was•She was able to pull three staples out of her swollen and wounded arm without any sort of reaction showing that physical pain in nonexistent for her

Connection•When Megan claims to have superpowers, it’s clear that she doesn’t, she has Congenital Insensitivity to Pain

References•Notes

•Wikipedia.com• Searched “Congenital Insensitivity to Pain” to get some more information regarding it• Searched “Grey’s Anatomy” to get some background info on the characters

Link to the media clip• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmmrzOzX9I4