Addiction to Cosmetic Surgery

Addiction means to be physical and mentally dependent on a particular substance, and unable to stop taking it without incurring adverse effects. According to American Society for Addiction Medicine (2012), “Addiction is a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry. Dysfunction in these circuits leads to characteristic biological, psychological, social and spiritual manifestations. This is reflected in an individual pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief by substance use and other behaviors”. The addictions are all different behaviors and trends that alter the normal behaviors accepted by the society and that are considered as healthy. Thoughts, feelings, and beliefs are parts of routines and stiles of the humankind, which are changing when the humankind are under the pressure of one addiction. There are many causes of cosmetic surgeries addiction leading to negative effects and compose appropriate solutions.
In the specific case of the cosmetic surgery addiction, different factors as social status, idea of beauty, self-steem, and, even, social pressure are its most definitive causes. According to Berrios and Kan (1996), cosmetic surgery addiction is a type of psychological disease, which makes people concerned a lot with body image, manifested as excessive concern about and preoccupation with a perceived defect of their physical features (p.2). The patients believe they have a shortage in their body, which causes psychological pressure and it also causes other diseases. Cosmetic surgery addiction often co-occurs with depression and anxiety, as well as social isolation. Although originally a mental-illness diagnosis of cosmetic surgery addiction usually applied to women, “it occurs equally among men and women, and occasionally in children and older adults”, suggested Phillips and Castle (2001).
The causes of cosmetic surgery addiction are different for each person. There is no single cause of cosmetic surgery