Last week the Psych Central newsroom had a story about self-esteem and a reduced need for antidepressant medication following plastic surgery. The sample was primarily middle aged women who received non-essential cosmetic surgery such as face lifts and breat augmentation. On the surface this makes some sense. If a person is bothered by a psysical feature enough to seek surgery to change it, then it is expected that the person would get a mood boost after it was completed. However, drawing this type of conclusion is flawed. For people that are chronically dissatisfied with their appearance, an alteration would provide a temporary self-esteem increase. However, if the underlying issue of equating one’s self-worth with appearance is not worked on, then this mood increase will eventually fade back to a baseline of dissatisfaction, and a new negative object of obsession to be fixed. Clearly this type of data benefits the plastic surgery industry (they comissioned the study), but I would argue that is offers a false promise to many patients considering these types of surgery.

Comments

This post currently has one comment. You can read the comments or leave your own thoughts on our new comments page.

Trackbacks

No trackbacks yet to this post.

    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 16 Oct 2006
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.