Professor Gemma Sharp

I think people often mistake the goal of the mental health professional as the gatekeeper to the procedure, and that's definitely not the case.

It's more that we are helping to assist in the decision-making for the best treatment moving forward.

Cosmetic practitioners must screen for body dysmorphic disorder, which I think is a great start.

So we know that body dysmorphic disorder has a prevalence about 1% to 2% in the general community, but it's been estimated anywhere between sort of 15% and 50% of people who seek cosmetic procedures.

So they're very much overrepresented in terms of those seeking this kind of intervention.

And it makes complete sense because people

People with body dysmorphic disorder don't necessarily think it is a mental disorder.

They will think that there is an issue with their appearance.

And so why wouldn't you go to a cosmetic clinic to get an appearance issue fixed than go talk about it with a psychologist?

So often BDD cases are picked up at the cosmetic clinics rather than the psychology clinics.

So even in my own research, in my own team's research, we have seen that when people have a very specific concern focused on one part of their body where the surgery has a definitive outcome, that body dysmorphic disorder symptoms can reduce.

And that's how you can end up having lots and lots of cosmetic procedures and still not feeling satisfied.

So I think...

When we look at the cosmetic surgery and cosmetic intervention statistics for the last, I suppose, 10, 20 years, there's this group, usually 35 to 50 year olds, who are the biggest consumers.

And some would say that that is potentially when signs of aging start to kick in.

And you'll hear people saying, well, I don't want to be discriminated against because of my age.

I need to be able to keep up a job.

I want to have access to certain relationships.

And so you'll think, well, why wouldn't they go and seek cosmetic procedures in order to not look 35 to 50?

I think what we have seen a bit more recently, though, is that younger people come in saying, well, I don't want to age at all.