The role of relationships and life satisfaction on body image perceptual disturbance in a sample of Mexican students

El papel de las relaciones y la satisfacción vital en la percepción de la auto-imagen en una muestra de adolescentes mexicanos

Objective: body Dysmorphic Disorder is defined as an excessive concern for a non-existent or minor body defect. It is estimated that the incidence of this disorder is around 2% of the population worldwide. The main purpose of this work is to assess the effects of multiples kinds of relationships with the peer group and life satisfaction for developing Body Dysmorphic Disorder in adolescent population. Materials and methods: Social Network Analysis techniques are applied to systematically assess the relationships among students within the class. Network centrality measures were calculated analyzing different kinds of relationships among boys (n= 139) and girls (n= 274) at eleven classrooms. Multiple regressions, cluster analysis, multivariate analysis and graph visualization were developed. Results: The results indicates that a low satisfaction with the own body and with the family relationships are the main predictors of this kind of somatoform disorders. Two subgroups were identified through cluster analysis. The first one shows a high-medium level of satisfaction and a relational context potentially conflictive. The second one presents high level of satisfaction, and a context of predominantly positive relationships. The first group displayed higher levels of Body Dysmorphic Disorder compared with the second. Conclusions: The conclusions of this work point to having a broad positive network acts as a protective factor against this type of disorders. Giving high importance to body image and criticize others for their physical appearance it is related to high levels of Body Dysmorphic Disorder.