Pejman Safaie
PhD Student, PsychologyUniversity of Stirling Stirling FK9 4LA Scotland, UK
pejman.safaie@stir.ac.uk
I am recently undertaking a PhD in Psychology at Stirling University. I also completed my Doctorate degree in Medical at Tehran in 1999 and then finally took Clinical Dermatology at King’s College, University of London in 2009.
As a Medical Doctor, I came into psychology since the psychological aspect of people who seeks aesthetic procedures has always been my passion. I would like to make a practical methodology for patient selection in the cosmetic field. Indeed, I assume body dysmorphic disorders; body image dissatisfaction, lack of self-stem and cultural impact on those disorders play a prominent role in dissatisfied cosmetic procedures.
I intend to expand my PhD work in a way to make a sort of instrument for an accurate patient selection. Precise patient selection may reduce unnecessary procedures and rate of dissatisfaction for either aesthetic dermatologist or patient. In addition, as an aesthetic dermatologist, the term of attractiveness and their criteria is another area of my interest. Precisely, I would like to evaluate criteria which may make lips augmentation more attractive.
Supervisors
First Supervisor: Dr Peter Cahusac
Second Supervisor: Dr Anthony Little
The aim of this research is to investigate potential psychological differences between people who seek non-surgical aesthetic procedures compared with those who are not interested. According to my previous experience, the vast majority of patients in aesthetic clinics are female. As a result, this project in the first step tries to focus on female student, women who referred to cosmetic clinics, and normal female population. Participants in different age groups, assess their needs about cosmetic procedures, and some terms such as attractiveness, and its impact on their quality of life, self-esteem by using a questionnaire base research through university announcement, aesthetic clinics, the Internet, Email, local advertising and social network services such as facebook. In addition, evaluation of the prevalence of preoperative characteristics (psychiatric disturbance, anxiety, depression, self-esteem, and specifically body dysmorphic disorder) in those people, who seek aesthetic procedures, would allow us to find a preoperative valid and reliable understanding of their motivating factors. In order to compare variation and potential cultural impact on individual populations, two distinct populations of Scottish/British and Iranian will be used. Furthermore, the concept of attractiveness may be assessed using a pool of standard-profile photographs of participants. We would take ten standard views (frontal, left and right lateral, left and right lateral oblique views in dynamic and static condition). They will be assessed by a group of participants.
In the first part of the study (5-10 minutes), participants will be asked to fill in a questionnaire. 10 photographs will be taken of each participant’s face from different angles. For the second part of the study, which will take place approximately 1 month after later, participants will be asked to look at a random sample of other participants’ pictures and rate their attractiveness (1-10 scale). All participant information and pictures keep confidentially. Participants will be permitted to withdraw at any time.