BDD
Posted by BrightEyes - 06/24/08, 09:06 pmBecause BDD is a serious disorder with potentially tragic consequences, a better understanding of its root causes would be a welcome medical advance. But how are we to think about a condition that is associated with widely disparate personality types and seems so driven by cultural pressures? Unlike mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, where biology clearly plays a major role, it's hard to see how excessive concern with the shape of one's nose or lips arises from brain mechanisms gone askew.
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Now medical researchers believe they have found a biological cause. In December, a team of UCLA psychiatrists conducted an fMRI study of BDD patients. Their results suggest that BDD patients may suffer from faulty visual processing, causing them to have skewed images of themselves and others. While it's an intriguing study and could provide some insights into BDD, it is ultimately inconclusive and underscores the fallacy of basing behavior on fMRI brain scans.
this study you described sounds interesting, but frankly i am curious about the definition of ''faulty visual processing''.
i am a visual artist, and one of my strengths is realistic rendering. i think if my visual processing were faulty i wouldn't be able accurately draw and paint what i see so well (i'm not just copying; i can also sketch people i know very well from memory alone).
maybe this faulty visual processing phenomenon could explain some people's skewed images of themselves, but i think that our obsession over every little flaw is imposed on us largely by the emphasis our culture places on the importance of appearance (especially on women). while i think there are plenty of people who manage to achieve a healthy attitude about their appearance despite not matching society's dicated ideals, i think others develop BDD because their upbringing failed to provide them tools and mechanisms for accepting imperfection and disappointment.
for example i think my personal history goes a long way in explaining my neurosis over my body: my mother focused obsessively on aspects of her appearance she felt she needed to ''correct'', so she has subsequently had multiple cosmetic surgeries, to the point that people comment on how dissimilar i look to her. you can imagine where this leaves me, since my mom was prettier than i was to begin with.
Spiky