Treatment
Studies have found that cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is effective in the majority of cases. In a study of 54 BDD patients who were randomly assigned to cognitive behavior therapy or no treatment, BDD symptoms decreased significantly in those patients undergoing CBT. BDD was eliminated in 82% of cases at post treatment and 77% at follow-up.
Since BDD is believed to be linked to low serotonin levels in the brain, SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) and other antidepressants are commonly prescribed. 74 subjects were enrolled in a placebo-controlled study group to evaluate the efficiency of fluoxetine (Prozac); patients were enrolled in a 12-weeks, double-blind, randomized study. At the end of treatment, 53% of patients responded to the fluoxetine.
A combined approach of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and antidepressants is more effective than either alone. The dose of a given antidepressant is usually more effective when it exceeds the maximum recommended doses that are given for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) or a major depressive episode.
Read more about this topic: Body Dysmorphic Disorder
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts.... The question “Why did you start using narcotics in the first place?” should never be asked. It is quite as irrelevant to treatment as it would be to ask a malarial patient why he went to a malarial area.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangling limitations of subject and treatment that it is a blind wonder it ever achieves any distinction beyond the purely mechanical slickness of a glass and chromium bathroom.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)