Self-compassion and cognitive flexibility in people with body dysmorphic disorder syndrome

Negative body image and its adverse behavioral consequences are important public health concerns, and studying effective psychological factors in its formation is very important.

The present research aimed to compare Self-compassion and Cognitive flexibility in people with and without body dysmorphic disorder syndrome.

The present study had a descriptive and causal-comparative design. The research population consisted of all women and men aged 18 to 40 of Tehran in 2022, from which a sample of 62 people was selected by available and purposeful sampling method (31 people as a sample group with symptoms of body dysmorphic disorder and 31 people as a sample group without symptoms of body dysmorphic disorder). Participants answered the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale modified for Body Dysmorphic Disorder: BDD-YBOCS (1997), Self-compassion Scale-Short Form (2011), and Cognitive Flexibility Inventory (2010). Data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance, by SPSS-25 software.

The results showed that the mean scores of self-compassion (F=31.16, P=0.001, Eta=0.34) and cognitive flexibility (F=31.24, P=0.001, Eta=0.18) were significantly lower in the group with symptoms of body dysmorphic disorder than the group without symptoms of body dysmorphic disorder and there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups (P<0.01).

The present study highlighted the importance of psychological mechanisms in the symptoms of body dysmorphic disorder. These findings indicated that psychotherapists should pay essential attention to the special psychological attributes of people with symptoms of body dysmorphic disorder at the time of prevention and treatment.