WHY IT’S IMPORTANT TO RECOGNIZE BDD IN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS
It’s important to recognize BDD in children and adolescents. As shown in Table 10, BDD can cause severe problems for children and adolescents. And in the inpatient study I’ve mentioned, adolescents with BDD had significantly greater anxiety, depression, and suicidal thinking than hospitalized adolescents without • BDD.Although the long-term consequences of BDD haven’t been well studied, it seems likely that when BDD develops during childhood or adolescence—rather than later in life—it may be particularly problematic. I’ve found that people who develop BDD before age 18 differ in some ways from those who develop it later. Indeed, we might expect that those with an earlier onset would be more impaired as a result of their symptoms because they’ve suffered for a longer time and during a developmentally critical period. Indeed, those with onset in childhood or adolescence are more likely to have been psychiatrically hospitalized (for any reason or because of BDD) and more likely to have attempted suicide.*156\204\8*
