The compulsive desire to look beautiful without a single pimple, to have light, fresh skin, just like on a selfie filter might consider a mental disorder. Young adults and teenagers want to realize this artificial beauty, and therefore they ask for plastic surgery. Experts call this compulsive need body dysmorphic disorder.
Never-ending Look Changes
According to experts, body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a mental health condition affecting 1 in 50 people in the United States. The disorder has been classified as part of the obsessive-compulsive spectrum. People with this disorder spend a lot of time in front of a mirror, undergoing repeated, often unnecessary, procedures. Obsessed, they look for flaws in their bodies. BDD disorder is associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression with suicidal tendencies.
In addition to trauma, personality traits, and the processing of the hormone of happiness (serotonin), another factor could contribute to this mental disorder, and that is a selfie or a selfie filter. The first author of this statement is Susruthi Rajanala, from the dermatological clinic of Boston Medical Center.
Experts Opinions
“The ubiquity of these filtered images can affect a person’s self-esteem, it can feel inadequate because it doesn’t look like it in the real world, and it can even act as a trigger and lead to [BDD],” write the authors of an article published in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery.
Study co-author Dr. Neelam Vashi, the Ethnic Skin Center director at BMC, comments on the findings, saying, “Filtered selfies can make people lose touch with reality, creating the expectation that we are supposed to look perfectly primped all the time.”
“A new phenomenon called ‘Snapchat dysmorphia’ has popped up […] where patients are seeking out surgery to help them appear like the filtered versions of themselves.”
Before we make a selfie we should keep in mind that the artificial beauty we can see all around us – on billboards, on TV, on the internet – is not real.
Source: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322706
Featured Image by Luis Wilker Perelo WilkerNet from Pixabay
