Deadly Disorder: Imagined-ugliness illness yields high suicide rate
By Eric Jaffe
The suicide rate among people with a psychiatric disorder that causes them to perceive themselves as ugly is higher than that among people with major depression, says a new report.
Over the course of a 4-year study, 2 of 185 patients with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) committed suicide. That’s twice the suicide rate in severely depressed people and 45 times that expected in a general population of the same age, sex, and geographic characteristics, says a research team led by Katharine Phillips of Butler Hospital in Providence, R.I., in the July American Journal of Psychiatry.