Body image perception of children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders

Interviews with 75 adolescents and children in a South Florida psychiatric hospital showed that patients expressed significantly less dissatisfaction with both height and weight than a group of 565 adolescents from the same geographical area. The dissatisfaction expressed by patients was more like that of a sub-group of the students with comparable ethnic characteristics. Patients reported that significant others concurred with their own judgements of body size. One half of patients who were judged by the researcher to be of normal weight wanted to be thinner. The recommendation is made that patients need help with body image perception and management because of the high percentage of dissatisfaction (85 per cent) even though hospitalization for psychiatric disorders does not appear to increase body-image problems.