Body Dysmorphia Research Paper

To this day, Body Dysmorphic Disorder affects about 1.7% to 2.4% of the population. That’s 1 in 50 people. So what exactly is Body Dysmorphic Disorder? Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is a severe psychiatric disorder that warps people’s images of themselves so they become obsessed with their own non-existent defects. They often spend hours checking themselves in the mirror, they avoid social situations, and they are driven to take actions such as self-surgery, self-harm, and even suicide. Even though Body Dysmorphia affects so many, not that much research has been done on it. Body Dysmorphia is not as well known as the other disorders, but it is just as awful and debilitating as the others are.
Tuesday 1/30/17: Imagine you have a friend
There is an alarming rate of suicide in Katharine Phillip’s patients. She explains that in her studies she found that 80% of her patients had thoughts about suicide, and 25% had attempted suicide. For example, Phillip’s describes one particular encounter with one of her patients, Juanita. “‘It’s severely upsetting. I fear I won’t be able to lead a normal life - date, have sex, and do the other things that people do . . . I feel like a freak, a bad person because I have a defect in my appearance. I fear that no one will ever love me - that I’ll be an outcast. So what’s the point of going on?’” (138) Unfortunately, this kind of thinking is not rare in people with BDD. And many of those with BDD have severe depression, caused by the isolation and self-consciousness that Body Dysmorphic Disorder provides. 94% of Phillip’s patients suffered from depression because of BDD. A few early theories said that BDD was a part of depression, but they discovered that BDD actually comes before. Although the depression is caused by BDD, it can often manifest itself deeper, and cause a multitude of other problems in it’s own right. People with BDD often tend to have more severe depression than both those with other psychiatric disorders, and the healthy controls. (128 -