Does Plastic Surgery Bring Happiness?
There always has been a negative assumption that many plastic surgery patients are unhappy with themselves and their body with general low self-esteem That is one of the driving forces that has made plastic surgery a taboo subject amongst many. Recently, a new European study from Ruhr Universität and the University of Basel has shed a new light on this controversy. Amazingly, researchers found that plastic surgery patients generally report a boost in self-confidence and higher enjoyment of life after their cosmetic procedure. Researchers examined the psychological effects of plastic surgery on nearly 550 patients to get to this conclusion. Women represent 87 percent of all patients who opted for plastic surgery.
Psychologist Jürgen Margraf and his coauthors looked at 506 people who had plastic surgery, and 163 who wanted it but had not yet had it done. They measured both groups’ life satisfaction, feelings of attractiveness, and levels of mental health problems at regular intervals, up to a year after those in the surgery group were operated on. The group who had surgery also scored significantly better than the group who didn’t on measures of self-esteem, positive attitude, life satisfaction, and general feelings of attractiveness.
Results appear in the journal Clinical Psychological Science.