Researchers Figured Out How To Fix Appearance Anxiety In Women, No Therapy Required
In women experiencing high levels of concern about their appearance, some clinical interventions based on smartphones may help reduce their appearance-related anxiety.
“Technology can lead to negative mental health effects, so one of my biggest driving questions within this research was how I can instead use technology to improve people’s mental health,” said Tapan Patel, a clinical psychology doctoral student at Florida State University.
According to the National Eating Disorders Association, between 69 and 84 percent of women above the age of 18 experience dissatisfaction with their bodies and wish to be a lower weight than they currently are.
Body dissatisfaction can cause self-consciousness and irregular eating habits, leading to social anxiety, eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depressive symptoms.
For the study, a total of 203 women in the United States between the ages of 18 and 65 were recruited. These women reported increased concerns with their appearances.
The research team administered two different interventions that lasted for a month and found that their solutions helped ease the women’s appearance concerns without them needing to meet with a clinical therapist.
“Anxiety about one’s physical appearance is a significant problem that can substantially affect a person’s quality of life,” said Jesse Cougle, a professor of psychology.
“Anxiety is common and a symptom of multiple psychiatric conditions, including disorders concerning eating, body dysmorphia, and social anxiety. We sought to test a brief, passive intervention we developed for appearance anxiety that did not require therapist involvement and was delivered via participants’ phones.”
The team designed two techniques: one of them monitored appearance-related safety behaviors, and the other tracked unhealthy behaviors.
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Participants were asked to self-record and reduce how often they engaged in appearance-related safety behaviors, which are behaviors that relieve a person from appearance anxiety.
These include checking out one’s body in the mirror, comparing one’s appearance to others, avoiding situations where one’s body is exposed, and more.
The control intervention asked participants to document and decrease their unhealthy behaviors, which are considered activities that maintain low self-esteem and low mood.
These activities include frequent napping, doomscrolling on social media before bed, and letting dirty dishes pile up.
The intervention targeting appearance-related safety behaviors led to lower appearance anxiety, social anxiety, eating disorder symptoms, and beliefs about the importance of appearance than the intervention targeting unhealthy behaviors.
In the future, the researchers hope to incorporate more elements in their intervention and test for the prevention of psychiatric disorders like social anxiety disorder, body dysmorphic disorder, and more. They also want to test the effectiveness of the intervention in men.
“This study displayed that the idea is sound, and having our research published was an ecstatic feeling. It’s motivating to know that colleagues in the field are encouraging and enthusiastic about our work. It means a great deal to know our research could help people,” Patel said.
The findings were reported in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.
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