Body Dysmorphic Disorder

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is characterized by the obsessive idea that some aspect of one’s body or appearance is severely flawed and therefore warrants exceptional measures to hide or fix it. In BDD's delusional variant, the flaw is imagined. If the flaw is actual, its importance is severely exaggerated. In either case, thoughts about it are pervasive and intrusive, and may occupy several hours a day, causing distress and impairing one's otherwise normal activities. BDD is a somatoform disorder in the obsessive–compulsive spectrum.

Shaina Feinberg is a young filmmaker with BDD.  In her NY Times Opinion video she makes her condition public and examines it with honesty and a wry touch.

 

 

 

 

Twice As Hard

Jasmine Brown, a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania, recently published Twice As Hard, a history of black women physicians in the United States. Before med school, she graduated from Washington University in St. Louis and was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford. Her book considers at the social and structural barriers blacks had to overcome to pursue a career in medicine. This was and is especially difficult for black women.

Twice As Hard looks of the careers of nine early black women physicians as the author compares their trials with her own struggles. They, and other black women physicians, helped her to understand what she was up against even today to achieve her dream.

Ms. Brown’s interview on February 15, 2023 by the Bellevue Literary Review can be accessed on You Tube.