RESUMO
OBJECTIVE: We assessed the clinical and demographic properties and comorbidity of 47 patients with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). METHOD: Fifty-four patients with BDD among 4768 consecutive outpatients over a 5-year period were reviewed and invited for comprehensive re-examination. A total 47 patients (male female=26:21) were rediagnosed according to DSM-IV criteria for BDD and comorbid lifetime psychiatric disorders using SCID-I. RESULTS: The mean age of BDD patients was 23.1 +/- 5.5 years and the mean age at onset of BDD was 17.6 +/- 2.4 years. The face (27.7%) and nose (25.5%) were the most common areas of concern, followed by hair loss/thinning, legs/knees, hands, and thinness. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (31.9%), major depression (21.3%), and social phobia (17.0%) were the most frequent additional lifetime DSM-IV diagnoses. Eleven patients (23.4%) had ideas of reference and 9 patients (19.1%) had delusions of deformity or reference. Four patients (8.5%) had made suicide attempts. CONCLUSION: BDD may be related to obsessive-compulsive disorder in several aspects, including patterns of comorbidity and symptom profile. These findings also support the idea that BDD has a psychotic subtype that is closely related to the primary disorder. BDD patients among the Turkish population have a symptom profile similar to those in western countries except for lower suicide attempts.