SELFIES LINKED TO A MENTAL ILLNESS
By Anton Antonio
September 4, 2015
“A ‘selfie’ is a
self-portrait photograph commonly taken with a hand-held digital camera or a
camera phone. Rather than use the timer
function of the camera, selfies are often taken at arm’s length and made to
appear that someone else took the photo.
Some selfies are also taken using a mirror. These photographs are the uploaded on social
networking services such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Netizens who have made careers out of
shooting selfies and posting them on social media, are said to be suffering
with a mental disorder called narcissism.
Narcissism is the pursuit of gratification from vanity or egotistic
admiration of one’s own attributes.”
(Antonio, 2014) The basic tools
for narcissism are the mobile phone camera and the selfie stick. For more information on a selfie stick,
please click on this link: http://antonantonio.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-mighty-selfie-stick.html
Not wanting to offend social media netizens who are
confirmed or borderline narcissists, here is a research material on selfies now
being linked to a mental illness. At
least the experts, not me, said it…
“SELFIES LINKED TO NARCISSISM, ADDICTION AND MENTAL ILLNESS…
The growing trend of taking smartphone selfies is linked to
mental health conditions that focus on a person’s obsession with looks. According to psychiatrists Dr. David Veal:
“Two out of three of all the patients who come to see me with Body Dysmorphic
Disorder since the rise of camera phones have a compulsion to repeatedly take
and post selfies on social media sites.”
“Cognitive behavioural therapy is used to help a patient to recognize
the reasons for his or her compulsive behaviour and then to learn how to
moderate it,” he told the Sunday Mirror.
A British male teen ager tried to commit suicide after he failed to take
the perfect selfie. Danny Bowman became
so obsessed with capturing the perfect shot that he spent 10 hours a day taking
up to 200 selfies. The 19-year-old lost
nearly 30 pounds, dropped out of school and did not leave the house for six
months in his quest to get the right picture.
He would take 10 pictures immediately after waking up. Frustrated at his attempts to take the one
image he wanted, Bowman eventually tried to take his own life by overdosing,
but was saved by his mom. “I was
constantly in search of taking the perfect selfie and when I realized I
couldn’t, I wanted to die. I lost my
friends, my education, my health and almost my life,” he told The Mirror. The teenager is believed to be the UK’s first
selfie addict and has had therapy to treat his technology addiction as well as
OCD and Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Part
of his treatment at the Maudlsley Hospital in London included taking away his
iPhone for intervals of 10 minutes, which increased to 30 minutes and then an
hour. “It was excruciating to begin with
but I knew I had to do it if I wanted to go on living,” he told the Sunday
Mirror. Public health officials in the
UK announced that addiction to social media such as Facebook and Twitter is an
illness and more than 100 patients sought treatment every year. “Selfies frequently trigger perceptions of
self-indulgence or attention-seeking social dependence that raises the
damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t spectre of either narcissism or very
low self-esteem,” said Pamela Rutledge in Psychology Today. The big problem with the rise of digital
narcissism is that it puts enormous pressure on people to achieve unfeasible
goals, without making them hungrier.
Wanting to be Beyonce, Jay Z or a model is hard enough already, but when
you are not prepared to work hard to achieve it, you are better off just
lowering your aspirations. Few things
are more self-destructive than a combination of high entitlement and a lazy
work ethic. Ultimately, online
manifestations of narcissism may be little more than a self-presentational
strategy to compensate for a very low and fragile self-esteem. Yet when these efforts are reinforced and
rewarded by others, they perpetuate the distortion of reality and consolidate
narcissistic delusions. The addiction to
selfies has also alarmed health professionals in Thailand. “To pay close attention to published photos,
controlling who sees or who likes or comments them, hoping to reach the
greatest number of likes is a symptom that ‘selfies’ are causing problems,”
said Panpimol Wipulakom, of the Thai Mental Health Department. The doctor believed that behaviours could
generate brain problems in the future, especially those related to lack of
confidence. The word “selfie” was
elected “Word of the Year 2013” by the Oxford English Dictionary. It is defined as “a photograph that one has
taken of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a
social media website”.” --- www.disclose.tv/news
This article is just a cute little reading material for all
netizens, especially Facebook, Instagram and Twitter users. It may help netizens make self-determinations
if they are nearing the “edge” or “fringe” of narcissism. Please remember this is nothing personal to
me. The core-message of this researched
material is just a gentle wake-up call for all netizens. This simply dwells on the possibility of
selfies linked to a mental illness.
Thoughts to
promote positive action…
(Please
visit, like and share Pro EARTH Crusaders on Facebook or follow me at http://antonantonio.blogspot.com/
and http://twitter.com/EarthCrusader.)
REFERENCES:
Antonio, A. C., (2014). “Selfitis”. Retrieved on September 4,
2015 from http://antonantonio.blogspot.com/2014/11/selfitis.html
Antonio, A. C. (2014). “The Mighty Selfie Stick”. Retrieved on September 4, 2015 from http://antonantonio.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-mighty-selfie-stick.html
www.disclose.tv/news,
(2015). Retrieved on September 4, 2015
from http://www.disclose.tv/news/Selfies_Linked_to_Narcissism_Addiction_and_Mental_Illness/101410
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