Can Plastic Surgery Improve Your Mental Health?
Plastic Surgery is one of the few specialties in medicine which has a correlation between mental health and itself. The two areas where plastic surgery in its sub-specialties like major trauma burns and cosmetic surgery has a huge psychological impact on the individual.
Cases like major trauma or burns have a post-traumatic impact on the patient and are very essential to managing the patient’s physical and mental well-being and eventual integration into society.
The impact of mental health before and after the procedure makes it a unique aspect where physical and mental transformation go hand in hand.
The impact of attractiveness, well-being, and self-esteem is something that improves with cosmetic surgery, and is also important to reiterate the importance of good research in finding the right surgeon as a botched procedure can have an adverse negative impact on mental health, more on this later
Mental Health After a Successful Procedure
There are multiple studies that state that after surgery, patients showed an improvement in a feeling of attractiveness, better social interactions, more confidence, fewer social phobias, and overall better quality of life.
All these positive aspects are seen if the patient had a particular aspect that they wanted to change which over a period of time has always been keeping them back from being confident about themselves be it their nose, breasts, sagging skin, fat in certain areas or the commonest in men being man boobs.
The most important marker of a happy surgery and outcome is to have realistic expectations and discuss in detail with your doctor what can be achieved so as to prevent disappointment, an example of which if you have been insecure about your nose and have realistic expectations about and for the first time in your life, a positive change in the nose and your appearance has occurred, then the mental implication of it will definitely be positive and help you move forward
Mental Illness Associated with Surgery
Body Dimorphic Disorder (BDD) is a mental condition where the person is preoccupied with the flaws or defects in their appearance and finds ways of improving them.
They spend a lot of time on this which causes them distress on a constant basis and hence seek out plastic surgery as the way to address them are dissatisfied and form a vicious cycle of multiple procedures to improve these imperfections, This cycle of patients seeking cosmetic surgery and more procedures can lead to excessive plastic surgeries, and can exacerbate the symptoms of body dimorphic disorder.
It is important for Plastic Surgeons to screen for body dimorphic disorder prior to performing any cosmetic procedures, and to refer patients with suspected BDD to a mental health professional for evaluation and treatment.
Plastic Surgeons are aware of the signs to look out for when consulting a patient.
So What are the Effects of Plastic Surgery on Mental Health?
The key takeaway here is that, while cosmetic surgery research shouldn’t be considered as a total substitute for other modes of mental health treatment, most people who undergo plastic surgery procedures like breast augmentation tend to feel happier and exhibit fewer signs of negative mental health after their procedures.
In other words, cosmetic surgery can improve your mental health under the right conditions. There are positive effects of plastic surgery on mental health.