Introduction
Dissatisfaction with personal appearance is an issue oftentimes met throughout all generations. With the popularization of beauty and fashion industries, humans started paying special attention to their looks and body image. Sometimes, going to the gym daily leads to increased attention towards the personal figure and the bodies of others. Some of the trainers or performing bodybuilders can be noticed posing in front of the mirror for hours or looking at others with a judging attitude. Some bodybuilders use additional “therapy,” intending to look perfect every day. Taking hormones (including anabolics), diuretics, pre-workouts containing heart rate stimulators impact trainers’ health state. Consequently, it becomes unclear if gym impact on humans can always be called healthy and if these sportsmen tell the truth to their followers on social media about progress achievement.
Another group of people is adolescents that perceive fashion models on the podium as idols and start deviating from the normal acceptance of body image. Teenagers, especially girls, believe model bodies to be a standard; however, most of them are far from being in a healthy proportional body condition. It will be fair to state that current life, people’s hobbies, and surroundings impact the opinion of the human body. There are various tastes regarding body image, but most of the individuals asked about their appearance want some changes and can identify some features they are dissatisfied with. Consequently, special categories of people deviate from a healthy perception of themselves and try to make modifications, or avoid mirrors, or torture themselves with diets.
Such a condition is called body dysmorphia, or dysmorphophobia, and can be present with mild or severe symptoms. That is why it is essential to identify the disorder and initiate treatment in the early stages to prevent further complications. According to Mitchison et al., the prevalence of body dysmorphia increased noticeably within the last decades (3). This assignment will focus on identifying the major reasons leading to the increase of body dysmorphic disorders within the last decades.
The Impact of Childhood Factors
The basement of all psychological issues takes roots from childhood and upbringing. Every human being is a plane list of paper before adults and the community start setting limits and rules he has to follow. Upbringing plays a central role in a child’s perception of the issues, himself and others, his attitude to failures and achievements. Moreover, parents give a child attention and love, essential factors meaning he is wanted and needed. With a lack of attention, it might be easy to develop thoughts regarding self-acceptance, a necessity in society, and self-confidence. Some people struggle and fight these fears coming from childhood; however, some accentuate their focus on these issues and develop mental health disorders. Hyperbolizing thoughts about self-insufficiency, about being unattractive, weak, slow might lead to more severe pathologies and end up with a bouquet of disorders. That is why considering a child in every family, expressing love, care, and concern about him, should be one of the most significant steps in a child’s upbringing. The damaging fragile psychological condition of a baby might lead to more complicated issues.
Cartoons are the other aspects influencing the body image perception since youngest years. Creating an ideal figure in the stories of both females and males subconsciously dictates a child that every person looks at on the screen. In actual life, people’s faces are disproportionate, every person has something to work on and make better regarding appearance. Nevertheless, Cinderella is drawn beautiful and perfect in any clothing, with smooth skin, long hair, and big eyes. Men in cartoons are tall, muscular, brave, and easily manage all the obstacles. The stories, most of the time, have a good end, good fights evil, tough periods of struggles last shortly and almost with no loss. Indeed, reality differs substantially: children face difficulties after watching the ideal cartoon world and comparing it to actual problems. People are not so proportionate, with a thin waist, ideal body, financially stable as Scrooge McDuck, and fight obstacles with magic words.
The perception created by cartoons initiates the first conflict in a child’s head, and the latter can become attracted more to looking at images than living a real life. Moreover, a child can get involved in video gaming where he can become anyone he wants of any features of appearance. Prolonged involvement in the magic world takes away the healthy perception of a child what he is and how he looks. Believing in something more perfect, symmetric, bright, and colorful on the screen develops the basement for body dysmorphia symptoms. Bullying at a young age by peers can also harm the psychological condition of a child. Not every adult can handle pressure from society regarding various questions, and for young people, it can be especially painful. The study by Foroughi et al. identified that bullying, perfectionism, and negativity had strong relations with body dysmorphia (3). To avoid that, teachers should educate students on proper behavior and respect for their classmates.
Working Out Goals
Some sportsmen training daily, participating in competitions also have deviated body image perceptions and symptoms of dysmorphophobia. The relationship between muscle dysmorphia and psychopathological symptoms was investigated in some research (Longobardi et al. 233). Even though they are usually not diagnosed with it and do not receive treatment, some bodybuilders accentuate special attention on their performance and muscle development. Such people cover the symptoms under the mask of work as it is their profession. Still, most of them harm themselves to achieve a sports goal by using steroids, diuretics, heart rate stimulators, and many other pharmaceutical supports for their appearance. A study by Devrim et al. stated such a category of patients have combined pathologies involving eating disorders and muscle dysmorphic disorders (1748). It turns out that looks become more important than health, and some of the performing bodybuilders keep using the medications even though they know about the risk for their heart, kidneys, and general health. Such masochistic strategies lead to the thought of mental health disorders as some professional sportsmen are willing to give their life to achieving goals and increasing muscle size.
Other Disorders’ Impact
The impact of other pathologies identified in one patient might worsen his perception of self and develop dysmorphophobia. Current literature does not claim some mental health disorders have a high chance of body dysmorphia development; however, the correlation between them was researched plurally (Tofte et al. 4). In DSM-5, dysmorphophobia is included in obsessive-compulsive disorders due to similarity in phenomenology, treatment tactics, and response to prescribed medications. However, body dysmorphia is oftentimes comorbid with such disorders as social anxiety disorder, obsessive disorder, and major obsessive disorder (Tofte et al. 7). Research by Khalil et al. identified the interconnection between polycystic ovary syndrome and anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphia among young women (3). The latter illuminates the issue of system and organ pathologies impacting the development of dysmorphophobia. Possibly, the hormones disbalance can influence the psychological state and develop issues regarding self-perception.
Genetic Factors. Counterargument
Despite the fact of provided proof and explanations, the question of all these factors’ impact stays open. Some believe it is hard to believe specialties of upbringing in childhood can impact the mental state of a person. Then, the majority of young adults would have developed various mental health issues and would have struggled with their traumas from before. However, some children grow up mentally stable, healthy, and strong, and some develop dysmorphophobia, depression, and anxiety despite the fact of being treated well at home. Consequently, the impact of some nonmodified factors should play a central role in disease development. Genetic predisposition creates a background for all the mentioned above factors that influence with higher intensity to a more sensitive and unstable psychiatric system.
Professional sport can also be perceived as a form of professional deformation but not a mental health disorder. Trainers and bodybuilders dedicate their lives to reach goals in life, and reaching them becomes primary for them despite the health issue. They may perceive life differently and lose interest in saving health while being on the race of muscle development and breaking genetic limits. It might be hard to identify body dysmorphia among such categories of patients as they might have mild symptoms and cover under working conditions inside which they look completely harmonic.
Other mental health pathologies and disorders of systems and organs have not been yet proved to be connected with the development of body dysmorphia. The disease can be solitary and correlate with no other comorbidities; and to prove some of them can impact the development of the disease, several studies should be realized. Before proving the positive correlation on a substantial number of patients, it is hard to state other disorders play a role in the development of the disease.
Conclusion
Hence, the issue of a higher prevalence of mental health disorders involving body dysmorphia during the last decades stays under the process of investigation. The major possible factors are childhood traumas and specialties of upbringing, bodybuilders’ professional deviation, correlation with other disorders, and genetic predisposition. Influencing all of them together might lead to the decrease of patients with dysmorphophobia.
Works Cited
Devrim, Aslı, et al. “Is There Any Relationship Between Body Image Perception, Eating Disorders, and Muscle Dysmorphic Disorders in Male Bodybuilders?” American Journal of Men’s Health, vol. 12, no. 5, 2018, pp. 1746-1758.
Foroughi, Aliakbar, et al. “Relationship of Concern about Body Dysmorphia with External Shame, Perfectionism, and Negative Affect: The Mediating Role of Self-Compassion.” Iranian Journal of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 13, no. 2, 2019, pp. 1-7.
Khalil, Halimah, et al. “Assessing Anxiety, Depression and Body Dysmorphia in Young Women with and Without PCOS: The Blue Morpho Gen Y Survey.” Endocrine Abstracts, vol. 75, 2021, pp. 1-10.
Longobardi, Claudio, et al. “Muscle Dysmorphia and Psychopathology: Findings from an Italian Sample of Male Bodybuilders.” Psychiatry Research, vol. 256, 2017, pp. 231-236.
Mitchison, Deborah, et al. “Prevalence of Muscle Dysmorphia in Adolescents: Findings from the EveryBODY Study.” Psychological Medicine, 2021, pp. 1–8.
Tofte, Alena, et al. “In the Mirror: Depression with Dysmorphia and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.” The Primary Care Companion for CNS Disorders, vol. 20, no. 5, 2018, pp. 1-11.