Depression
- Nick Sibiryakov
- May 31, 2015
- 3 min read
As the world becomes a more and more effortless place to live, we are left with more time on our hands. We drown ourselves in toxic media and unnatural standards, leaving unhealthy scars on our minds.
We start to look after everything. Everything we eat, everything we do, everything we wear. We feel like we’re always being watched. Body image, the way we see ourselves now, is not inflicted by our guardians. Now, it’s the mere reflection of society and media trying to control us. This can be harmful.
The Bradley Hospital and Brown Medical School in Houston, Texas have done some research on this concern. “This is important because distressing and impairing body image concerns appear to be very prevalent among adolescents with psychiatric illnesses, and are related to a higher degree of distress and impairment,” says psychologist Jennifer Kittler, PhD with Bradley Hospital and Brown Medical School. “We can’t escape it, but we can stop it.”
“For teens in general, the term ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ does not apply,” says depression specialist Andrew Solomon. “To them, ‘pretty’ is the model posing on the magazine, like the photoshopped selfie on the internet.”
Those pictures provide unforgiving and impossible standards that pressure young girls and teens about their physique. Those pictures and commercials and other media sends the idea into teen’s minds that feeling good in your own skin can only be achieved by changing your appearance.
They believe almost everything that they hear or see. They start feeling pressured to look like society wants them to. They believe that they would be happier and more popular if they lost weight, got killer abs, and slimmed their thighs, and had similar physique to pop stars and models that achieve their physical build-up with heavy dieting, extreme exercise, stylists, makeup artists and photoshop.
“This pressure,” Solomon says, “sends a signal for a stress response, that over time can go from a few minutes to a few hours to a few weeks, months and that is toxic to the mind just as it is torment to the entire body.”
Social media is also pressuring girls in a different way, making them want to feel like they’re always “camera ready”.
“Friends and family can also influence your body image with positive and negative comments,” says Solomon. Teens are starting to care about the opinion of others. They want to fit in, be accepted, and be admired. Poor body image can influence anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.
Adolescents with body image concerns are more likely to be depressed, anxious, and suicidal than those without intense dissatisfaction over their appearance, even when compared to adolescents with other psychiatric illnesses according to a new study by researchers at Brown Medical School.
One-third of all adolescents have a problematic body image. Ninety-five percent of everyone that has an eating disorder is in between the ages of 12-25.
An additional finding revealed that not only higher levels of depression, anxiety and suicidality were found in patients with shape or weight preoccupations, but they also expressed higher levels of dissociation (a coping style characterized by blocking out emotions), sexual preoccupation/distress, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The authors found that the majority of the adolescents in the study were not actually overweight. Two hundred and eight consecutively admitted patients (ages 12 to 17) on the adolescent inpatient unit of Bradley Hospital completed the Body Dysmorphic Disorder Questionnaire (BDDQ) as part of their admission evaluation.
The questionnaire assessed the presence of BDD by asking whether respondents were very worried about how they looked and thought about their appearance problems a lot, and how they wish they could think about them less, and whether their main appearance concern is that they are not thin enough, or might become too fat.
“We found that 6.7 percent of patients on the adolescent inpatient unit at Bradley Hospital met criteria for classic (non-weight-related) BDD, but that a much higher percentage (22.1 percent) exhibited distressing and impairing concerns with their weight and shape,” says Kittler.
Young people who reported that they were overweight were more likely to also report having suicidal thoughts. At age 10, girls who believed they were overweight were significantly more likely to think about suicide than boys.
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