Mirror, Mirror: Body Dysmorphic Disorder - Part 1

In a world where looks and image are everything, imagine feeling too ugly to even step out the front door, so ugly that you wanted to kill yourself.

It might sound ridiculous, but for victims of a little known mental illness, it's a daily reality. No-one knows what causes Body Dysmorphic Disorder but it leaves once healthy teenagers crippled by their imagined ugliness.

(2001)
Reporter: Tara Brown, Producer: Kathryn Bonella

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• bdd
• body
• dysmorphic
• disorder
• mirror
• imagined
• ugliness

[Agnesstation]

poor people! god bless them all :(

[musicmatterstome105]

BDD is a terrible disease, and myself and my therapist have come to the conclusion that I probably do have a slight case of it.

However, what qualifies to make someone have BDD?

I know that people will say there is no such thing as 'being ugly'. But honestly, if someone isn't content with their looks and obsesses over them.... Is it always a distorted view?

[Namira88]

:( I'm so sorry for people who have BDD, it must be hard... I hope they can all be cured...

[watchWorld100]

@dtfpizza i have to agree. i have bdd, ocd and bipolar. bdd is the greatest suffering in this universe. second is ocd then bipolar. i am really angry why nature has this bullshit property.

[cbertram11]

this is what my mom thinks i have but the thing is my issues are true! my hair is thining and i have supper bad scars all over my face and she wont let me deal with it! instead she wants to shove prozac down my throat! so far everyone ive seen in this video are beautiful! this is driveing me nuts!!

[ouroboros98]

@musicmatterstome105...believi­ng great looks will save all my problems, but I know they won't; my mind would then just move onto the next deficiency. Having learned from experience, you need to give less of a shit about other people especially the opposite sex, and focus on loving yourself before you can love anyone else or have meaningful relationships or live a full life. I hope you can read this and take solace and find some peace within yourself.

[ouroboros98]

@musicmatterstome105 also mate, despite all these comments about how superificial our world is, if you actually look objectively, at the facts, you will see that a lot of successful people in government/corporations/resear­ch/business are not all models, even in tv and film. It just wouldn't make sense statistically to exclude the great proportion of the population from these positions for something so trivial as looks. I am like you in being intensely critical of myself and believing...

[ouroboros98]

@musicmatterstome105 hi mate, as you state, you may in fact be ugly or you may just be normal looking. I know you want to be super hot but that won't stop you having to work hard each day, go through bad times, lose people, feel shitty from time to time. Being good looking is not the key to all great things, as witnesssed by the testaments of the people in the above video. I just want to add some shades of grey into your world perspective : )

[adamdyerseve]

i'm 29 years of age and i definitely suffer from BDD!

i have a complexity called: NOSE!

i'm after a nose job (2009) and I have never been satisfied with how it looks ever since and i'm always confident that it changes and deteriorates, and to tell the truth, it has actually changed (to the extent that i have descried a bump that has never existed before in my nose and it made me highly depressed lately). therefore, it will be safe to say that my worst nightmare has appeared to manifest!

[dtfpizza]

I used to be BDD, then that was replaced with Bipolar. Honestly, I prefer Bipolar.

[whatamunter]

@2357649827536 I wasn't criticising them, I was criticising the way that the show was made. I think the show should allow us to FULLY understand just how much this disorder affects their brain. It kind of makes it look like they're self-centred people who were are very preoccupied with their looks, when it's -from what I understand- a disease that MAKES them preoccupied with their looks.