Selective processing of emotional
information in body dysmorphic disorder
by
Buhlman U, McNally RJ, Wilhelm S, Florin I.
University of Marburg, Germany.
buhlmann@psych.mgh.harvard.edu
J Anxiety Disord 2002;16(3):289-98

ABSTRACT

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a syndrome characterized by distress about imagined defects in one's appearance. Though categorized as a somatoform disorder, BDD is marked by many characteristics associated with social phobia (e.g., fear of negative evaluation) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (e.g., intrusive thoughts about one's ugliness, checking). In the present experiment, we tested whether BDD patients exhibit selective processing of threat in the emotional Stroop paradigm as do anxiety-disordered patients. Relative to healthy control participants, BDD patients exhibited greater Stroop interference for positive and negative words, regardless of disorder-relevance, than for neutral words. Further analyses suggested that interference tended to be greatest for positive words related to BDD. These data suggest that BDD patients are vulnerable to distraction by emotional cues in general, and by words related to their current concerns in particular. Results suggest that BDD may indeed be related to anxiety disorders such as social phobia.

BDD
Bulimia
Serotonin
Self-mutilation
Slimming drugs
Eating disorders
Evolution and emotion
Body dysmorphic disorder
Treatment of body dysmorphic disorder

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