A British teen is being described as a selfie addict after an apparent struggle with body dysmorphia manifested itself as a compulsion to spend large amounts of his day taking photos of himself on his iPhone.
The 19-year-old reportedly photographed himself up to 200 times a day in a quest to take the perfect selfie, before a December 2012 suicide attempt triggered by what he described as an inability to take a good-enough photo.
"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 said in an interview with The Mirror.
"I would be so high when someone wrote something nice but gutted when they wrote something unkind," he added, describing the feedback loop that often comes along with social media.
“Danny’s case is particularly extreme,” said Dr. David Veal, a psychiatrist whose clinic workd with the teenager. “But this is a serious problem. It’s not a vanity issue. It’s a mental health one which has an extremely high suicide rate," Dr. Veal warned.
[via New York Daily News]
