Case study: body dysmorphic disorder in adolescents

Body dysmorphic disorder, an often-secret preoccupation with an imagined or slight defect in appearance, is an underrecognized disorder that is unknown to many clinicians. This disorder has gone virtually unmentioned in the adolescent literature, despite the fact that it often occurs during adolescence. Body dysmorphic disorder is more common than is realized and causes significant distress and impairment in functioning. This report presents four cases of adolescents with body dysmorphic disorder, all of who responded to a serotonin reuptake inhibitor. The clinical features of body dysmorphic disorder are reviewed, as are available data on the treatment of this distressing and often-disabling disorder.