Body Dysmorphic Disorder Research Paper

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein the Creature has a disorder known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Body Dysmorphic Disorder is a disorder where people are always upset about their physical appearance. People worry that something is wrong with their appearance, when in fact they look normal. “Before dark and opaque bodies had surrounded me, impervious to my touch or sight” (Shelley, 90). The disorder “Body Dysmorphic Disorder” is a condition the creature from mary shelley's Frankenstein has by not liking his appearance which is a symptom of the disorder. Body dysmorphic disorder is just in the people's imagination on how their appearance is flawed. People with BDD think about their imagined or slight appearance flaw often throughout each day. “Here, then i retreated and lay down happy to have found a shelter

Only 1 percent of Americans are estimated to have body dysmorphia, yet it is present in 15 percent of those undergoing plastic surgery (Nowak 20). This disorder greatly interferes with daily life, as it often results in solitude, excessive grooming, social inadequacies, and hours of obsession. For instance, 25 percent of those with body dysmorphia have been housebound for over a week (Metules 32ac4). Just like those with breast augmentation surgery, the rates of suicide among these patients are alarmingly high. People with body dysmorphia are 45 times more likely to commit suicide than the average person: 2 times more than those with major depression, and 3 times more than those with bipolar disorder. (Nowak 20) Evidently, candidates for aesthetic plastic surgery are facing problems far deeper than physical

Upon reflection, I have decided to go into more research on this topic through the question of: What is Body Dysmorphic Disorder and how have print and television advertisements

People now a days have a problem with the way they appear. For hundreds of years, people, especially females, have been concerned with their weight, the way they look, and the way people perceive them. In the article, Do You Have a Body Image Problem? author Dr. Katharine A. Phillips discusses the concerns with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). Dr. Phillips uses her knowledge or ethics to discuss the effects that BDD has on people today. She also uses emotion to show the reader how people are seriously affected by this disorder. In Dr. Phillips article, she discusses how people are emotionally and socially affected by the body dysmorphic disorder, and how society is also affected by it.

It's tempting to want to get plastic surgery. It makes those with Body Dysmorphic Disorder feel better about themselves. Plastic Surgery has exploded the last couple decades being a popular trend from people being unsatisfied with their body, with a goal towards perfection. No wonder these modern day popular procedures are being used as a self improver to achieve perfection of one's looks for those with BDD. It may question many, why do people of BDD have the urge of aiming for perfection? The disorder causes them to have obsession with their appearance. They may thrive on a boost to their confidence in their workplace or school. It usually will help them with confidence for a while causing even better outcomes. The issue is it won't be long term confidence assuming surgery goes accordingly, and assuming surgery goes wrong it can cause major disappointment emotionally.

The International OCD Foundation discovered that about 1 in 50 of the general population suffers from body dysmorphic disorder. Body dysmorphic disorder, or body dysmorphia, is a mental health condition where a person spends too much time worrying the imperfections in their appearance. Anyone can have body dysmorphia, but it is most common in teenagers and young adults.

As this disorder is most commonly seen in women, millions of women every day are being bombarded with the media’s idea of the “perfect” body. These unrealistic images are being portrayed in women’s magazines all over the country. The message being sent to women is that they are not pretty or skinny enough. The average American woman is about 5,4 and weighs 140 pounds, while the average American model is 5,11 and weighs 117 pounds. As a common example, thirty years ago, Marilyn Monroe was a size 14 and had the “ideal” body size and shape, but today the standards are getting much smaller. As the beauty ideals continue to get smaller in our society, body image within American women will continue to plummet. As these Magazines portray and compare happiness with being thin, therefore some feel, as they are not thin enough. Which will lead to them being to being unhappy. As women of all ages are believed to hold unrealistic ideals of body shape and size, when these ideals can be both physically and emotionally unhealthy to

In the article, Understanding Body Dysmorphic Disorder: An Essential Guide, Katharine defined as a condition whereby individuals feel dissatisfied with their physical appearance (12). This condition is caused by brain differences, genes, and environment. An abnormal brain anatomy might play a huge role in making people susceptible to this health condition. People with Body Dysmorphic Disorder (B.D.D) have been known to inherit the conditions from their parents. Environmental factors such as culture contribute to making a person develop the dysmorphic disorder. These environments usually contain negative social interactions with people who make funny comments about an individual's physical appearance.

Body Dysmorphic Disorder or BDD is something that has been rather controversial in the past. Is it something that could be linked to society as a whole? Could it even be something that has been implanted in us at an early age? Probably so, studies have shown that in the past that BDD can be brought about by the stigmas that are placed on us when we are young by the media. Some would say that this phenomenon is something that could be completely avoided if we just take away what it means to be perfect in the world’s eyes today. Perfection is something that we have been taught to strive for since we were still in our mother’s wombs, mothers and fathers go around saying that their child is their perfect little Angel. When

Preoccupation with an imagined defect in appearance is one way to possibly detect body dysmorphic disorder. If a slight physical anomaly is present, the person’s concern with the body part is extremely excessive. The preoccupation causes significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

Body Dysmorphic Disorder is a non-communicable disease that gets little attention because of how uncommon/unoticed it is. Because of the lack of knowledge people have about this disorder, some get offended when people afflicted with this disease avoid social situations/are negative etc. As someone that lives with Body Dysmorphia, I know from personal experience it is much more of a struggle that it physically appears to be.

Thomas F Cash is a Professor of Psychology at Old Dominion University , has published more than 150 pieces on the psychology of physical appearance. He has addressed topics llike body image development, eating disorders, appearance stereotyping, discrimination and more. He has also developed a program to help individuals gain a more positive body image called, The Body Image Workbook: An 8-step Program for Learning to Like Your Looks. The Editor Thomas Pruzinsky is also a Professor of Psychology at Quinnipiac University, and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Plastic Surgery at the New York University School of Medicine. He works with other Professors at Yale on research projects that evaluate body image adaptation in cosmetic

In his article “Anorexia Nervosa and the Body Uncanny: A Phenomenological Approach,” (2013) Fredrik Svenaeus studies the different forms of alienation in the anorexic’s body and the ways in which these forms interact. He adopts a phenomenological approach to the issue. Svenaeus focuses on the “uncanniness” of the experience of alienation of the body. The author displays an interesting concept when discussing an anorexic named Hannah’s case. Her family develop the view of anorexia as something inherently distinct from their daughter and even go on to speak of the anorexia as a separate person inside the girl (Svenaeus, 2013). It begs the question of whether by doing so, they are further instilling the mind/body dichotomy into their daughter’s

According to WebMD, "body dysmorphic disorder is a distinct mental diorder in which a person is preoccupied with an imagined physical defect or a minor defect that others often cannot see." These people tend to call themselves ugly avoid being social with others, they also may hide behind plastic surgey to improve their image.

Madsen et al. (2013) studied lower to higher order stages of visual information processing with visual processing tasks which contain images of faces, bodies, and other objects in two clinical groups of BDD and anorexia nervosa (AN). Both groups demonstrated over-attention to details, poor processing of global features and a tendency to focus on symptom-specific details in their own photographs, in that, BDD participants concentrate on facial features and AN focus on body parts. The findings were significant for also images of others and for non-appearance related stimuli. As mentioned before, a higher proportion of the BDD patients perceived defects or flaws in physical appearance that are not observable (Madsen et al., 2013). Another study investigated asymmetry detection in participants whom asked to identify symmetry in photographs and arrays of dots with unaltered or altered in symmetry. There was not significant difference between BDD and control groups in precision of detecting asymmetry with faces or arrays of dot, although the BDD participants were slower in decision making about asymmetry (Reese Mc Nally, & Wilhelm, 2010). In addition, stangier et al. (2008) reported that BDD participants were significantly more accurate than controls at identifying changes made to facial features such as size of nose or distances between different features of the face (Stangier, Adam-Schwebe, Muller, & Wolter, 2008).