Body insecurity: The new worry among teenagers in Bengaluru

BENGALURU : Selfies and social media are definitely the new ‘cool’ in the current generation but it definitely has its own side-effects - one being teenagers as young as 13-year-olds seeking professional help/counselling due to insecurities over their body image. Have the numbers increased in the past year? Psychiatrists and counsellors say yes as they are dealing with as many as 4 cases per week, up from 2 just a few years back. 

According to Dr Pallavi Arvind Joshi, psychiatrist Columbia Asia Hospital, she sees 5-7% of her total cases being women aged between 13 to 30 years.  “Peer attention, matters the most for the young generation. The popularity of social media is also increasing year by year. When they do not get the desired life or if they feel they do not fit onto the scale of their peers, they feel themselves to be unworthy. All these factors are leading to imbalanced mental health among young girls/ youngsters,” she said.

Recalling a case which he attended to just last week, psychiatrist of Sakra World hospital Dr Naveen Jayaram spoke about a 14-year-old who came in with depression. “She would not eat as she was scared of weight-gain when she was already extremely thin. Her low self-worth was the cause of depression and this also results in eating disorders,” he told CE adding that he receives 10-12 cases a month.

How do teenagers deal with peer pressure? Most of them succumb to the pressure by obsessively trying to fit into the media or society’s standards of beauty. “Those who give in to these demands end up engaging into a lot of self-destructive behaviour like extreme dieting, starving, smoking, taking drugs or undergoing risky cosmetic surgery procedures,” says psychologist Akanksha Pandey, Fortis hospitals.

Doctor’s opinion
According to Dr Pallavi, young girls should learn to introspect to understand if good looks matter the most. Also, certain factors like obesity or health can be changed as it is in control of an individual but looks/perceptions can never be changed as it isn’t under direct control. What people think about you or judge you isn’t in your control and trying to cope with their expectations leads to stress and anxiety. Individuals should learn to be realistic and never fall prey to society/ peer’sjudgements.