Georgina is an Honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Associate Professor of Young People’s Mental Health and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, at University College London. Her research interests include developing novel, evidence-based methods for delivering cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) in young people, and understanding factors that interfere with recovery in order to inform the development of new treatment approaches.
Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is a highly effective treatment for OCD and BDD, but young people often require support from parents to get the most out of therapy. This talk will cover some of the factors that can interfere with young people fully engaging with CBT, and we will discuss what parents can do to promote engagement. The talk will also address some of the common concerns that families have about remotely-delivered therapy, which has become commonplace over the last 15 months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Rob, Kitty and Hannah recap recent news and developments from the charity, community initiatives and how you can get involved with helping the Foundation.
We hear too often that people with BDD fall through the gaps between primary and secondary care and are left unable to access this treatment which is vital for recovery from BDD. As a charity, we responded to the inconsistencies in statutory mental health care provision by establishing a Structured Support Group (Now known as Overcoming BDD Programme), where we deliver evidence-based CBT in a group format online. We also enable peer support both between participants of the group and from our team of Peer Facilitators who all have their own experiences of BDD. The pilot phase ran from 2018-2021, where we conducted three iterations of the pilot project. We collected lots of feedback from both our participants and our Peer Facilitators, so that we could evaluate its success and make improvements. This talk will explore the role of peer support in the BDD Foundation’s online CBT-BDD programme and will provide a chance to hear from former participants on how accessing peer support has been so vital for their recovery.
Hannah works at the BDD Foundation co-ordinating the peer-delivered group-CBT project for BDD. She is a PhD researcher at Queen Mary, University of London where she studies culturally inclusive prevention strategies for eating disorders and body dysmorphic disorder – both of which she has lived experience of.
Alanah has worked for the BDD Foundation as a structured support group facilitator. She is currently finishing her two-year MSc in Developmental Psychology and Clinical Practice at UCL and The Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families. Alanah has lived experience of BDD and has raises awareness about BDD through newspaper/magazine articles, documentaries, podcasts and as a speaker for the BDD Foundation Conference in 2016.
Nicole is a child, community and educational psychologist; yoga teacher and yoga therapist. She is a trustee of the BDD Foundation and director of the Yoga in Healthcare Alliance. Nicole has authored the books ‘False Bodies, True Selves: Moving Beyond Appearance-Focused Identity Struggles and Returning to the True Self’ and ‘Bodies Arising: Fall in Love with your Body and Remember your Divine Essence’.
‘Narrative approaches view mental health struggles, including BDD, as a bid to make sense of painful, oppressive life experiences through ‘thin’ stories told about the self to the self.
In this session – which will appeal to people with lived experience, loved ones and therapists – we will consider how narrative approaches can be supportive in BDD including a short exploration of creative writing and reading to aid recovery and healing.’
As we return back to “the new normal” since COVID-19, it is natural to want to seek safety and hide from the things that scare us. However, it is crucial that we all embrace our discomfort and remember that fear only gets stronger when we resist, avoid or fight it. During this presentation, participants will gain powerful skills and tools to help them lean into their fears and practice self-compassion, instead of self-judgment and self-punishment.
Kimberley is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the State of California and the founder of CBTschool.com, an online platform that provides courses for those with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviours who do not have access to mental health care. Kimberley is the host of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast.
“BDD used to take up about 95% of my being. Now, the parts of me that bring me joy are bigger than my BDD.”
Now a holistic therapist, Rachel is our first guest from across the pond, and hopefully the first of many! In this episode, she shares her experience of BDD and how everything from working at a cat hotel to learning ballroom dancing has helped her to manage the disorder and find joy.
You can download the transcript for this episode here:
We are proud to announce that the BDD Foundation is the charity partner of The Humanians.
The Humanians is a socially conscious NFT collection born on the Ethereum Blockchain led by the celebrated female artist Amber Day, creator of VISBII – bridging art and utility in the NFTverse, while bringing awareness to the growing mental health issue of Body Dysmorphia. Through their inclusive and supportive Web3 communities on Twitter and Discord, The Humanians celebrate everyone and anyone, free of prejudice and judgement.
The team behind Humania, Odd One Out Labs joined forces with Amber to make a real difference in the NFT space. Together they curate and collaborate relationships with organisations, people and communities, advocating for social change around mental health stigma especially focused on BDD.
The Humanians have partnered with The Be Well Collective and The Body Dysmorphic Disorder Foundation as co-charity partners with the aim to make a difference in the real-world – serving as the bridge between social causes, communities, cultures, creatives and the Blockchain.
In case you didn’t know, Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are single one off cryptographic assets sitting on a blockchain with unique identification codes and metadata that distinguish them from one another. NFTs can represent real-world or digital assets like artwork, music even to things like real estate; “Tokenizing” these assets makes buying, selling, and trading them more efficient while reducing the probability of fraud as all transactions are fully transparent with the purchase agreements viewable and not editable via smart contracts on the blockchain.
The Humanians aims to help promote The BDD Foundation’s aim which is to relieve the suffering for people with BDD, while donating to the BDDF to advance research, treatments and awareness of the condition which is often under-diagnosed. The founders will also be video documenting the entire journey along the way.
The Humanians and the BDD Foundation will be working together closely to make a sustained difference built around the BDD Foundation’s three pillars of action which are Awareness, Information, and Support. The Humanians aim to be an advocate for change by tackling unrealistic body expectations perpetuated by social and modern media. As part of this support effort The Humanians have an in-house certified NHS Mental Health Nurse Ouma Cazaril who runs an interactive discussion every Tuesday / Wednesdays at 8-9pm GMT, and Saturday Mornings at 7-8am GMT, where she discusses tips on healthy coping mechanisms. You can attend this on The Humanians Discord Channel.
Amber Day the artist for The Humanians has endured her own battles with body self image – which can be seen in her art style, where characters have exaggerated physical traits and quirky designs and proportions. “The idea of the human form has always fascinated me, and I believe the work I create is my way of exploring and seeing just how far I can push the boundaries of what society and ourselves deem as normal,” says Amber, adding that she is forever exploring her world of emotions, mental states, hardships, struggles, and the possibilities to live a more balanced life.
“As an abstract expression of humanity, The Humanians depict the human form in all of its glory and beauty: You are perfect no matter your size or proportion.” Says Amber.
Working to raise awareness The Humanians will also be raising funds for BDDF which is greatly needed – The BDD Foundation is the only charity in the world exclusively dedicated to raising awareness and alleviating the suffering caused by Body Dysmorphic Disorder. The BDDF runs on a very limited budget. They have a dedicated and diverse board of trustees consisting of leading clinicians and individuals with lived experience of BDD.
Together our aim is to spread positivity and support for our amazing community with tools and resources that promote active support and research.
This study will explore the effects of face orientation, both right-side up and upside down, on emotion recognition for individuals with BDD.
The main benefit for research participants taking part in the current study is that further research exploring the potential impacts for emotion recognition for individuals with BDD may provide better insight into the overall function of BDD emotion recognition and potentially add to previous face-processing literature.
You are invited to participate in this research project because you are either diagnosed or self-diagnosed with BDD and over the age of 18 and not currently in therapy for BDD.
Your participation will involve completing an online Qualtrics questionnaire that will take less than 30 minutes of your time. The quiz will ask you to input which emotion you believe is being presented by images of faces that are either right-side up or upside down.
This study will explore the effects of face orientation, both right-side up and upside down, on emotion recognition for individuals with BDD.
Are you very CONCERNED with your appearance?
Do you often WORRY about your looks?
Do you CHECK your appearance many times a day?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, and if you are 18+ years old and live in the U.S., you may be eligible to participate in our smartphone research on severe body image concerns. This research is being conducted remotely (no in-person visits) by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School
“My name is Julia and I am writing to you from Massachusetts General Hospital, where I work in our Body Dysmorphic Disorder Program. We are running a smartphone research study in which we are seeking to understand the day to day factors that contribute to negative thoughts, emotions and/or substance use in people with severe appearance concerns.
We are looking for adults (18+) with severe appearance concerns in the United States who might be interested in participating. The study is fully remote, with no in-person visits, and participants are compensated for their involvement.”
If you are interested in participating or learning more, please visit our website https://mghocd.org/bddphonestudy/ . Fill out the brief survey at the bottom of the site, and if it looks like you may be a good fit, someone from our research team will be in touch!
Evie has channelled her experience of skin picking (also known as dermatillomania) into her artwork creating posters to raise awareness and understanding of this little known condition.
“For one of my final year university projects, I decided to base it around a subject close to my heart – Body Dysmorphic Disorder. I created these two posters in the hopes of shedding light on something that has truly affected my life for many years – skin picking. Growing up, I never knew it was part of a disorder to get help for as I had never seen or heard anyone talk up about it. It was almost pushed under the carpet. I felt ashamed and embarrassed at what I was doing yet I couldn’t stop and never understood why.
Fortunately, I was lucky enough to have parents who were understanding when I opened up to them about it five years ago and they have supported me ever since. However, I have become increasingly aware that there are many others out there who pick their skin and struggle alone because they think it is something to be embarrassed about. But I am here to tell them it’s not. I used a 3D print of my face as a canvas to display skin picking. At first I was scared about doing this because only my close friends and family know about it, but I am sick of hiding and want to be able to try and squash the stigma around it so that others don’t feel so alone the way I did growing up. There is a QR code that takes anyone who sees the posters to the best source of information (the BDD Foundation) to either read about and educate themselves on BDD or to find the best help if they are struggling.
My goal is to get the posters out in as many places as possible to help others like me and be a part of raising awareness for Body Dysmorphic Disorder!” – Evie Horrell
