ABSTRACT
Except for collaboration by surgeons and mental health professionals, plastic surgeons might be just complaining to each other about their eccentric patients without understanding what they saw. BDD is not a new disorder, but rather the current term for a disease that was previously called dysmorphophobia in the eastern European, German, and Russian psychiatric literature. Another distinction between BDD and somatization disorders was evidence that women with BDD were less aware of being ill than unaffected individuals. BDD is almost always a chronic disease, with only a 20% chance of full remission within four years, and a high probability of relapse. Arousal, avoidance, and re-experiencing, which 88% of these patients recount, characterize posttraumatic stress disorder.
