The Pattern of Appearance Schema in Patients with Dermatological Disorder

There has been a stigma attached to diseases of the skin for centuries. A  healthy  normal  skin  is  essential  for  a  person’s  physical  and  mental  well-being  and  sense  of  self –confidence.  It   has  been  estimated   that  approximately   one  third  of  the   patients  presenting  with  the  dermatological  disorders  have  some  psychological  co-morbidity (Rosenberg, 1960).  Literature has shown that patients with vitiligo and acne are mostly affected by their psychosocial wellbeing, whereas psoriasis and atopic dermatitis patients are affected by both physical and psychosocial well-being. Self-evaluative salience reflects the importance of appearance to one’s sense of self-worth.  A  person  who  is  self-evaluative  define  or measure  themselves  and  their  self- worth  by  their  physical   appearance  and it  deem  influential  in  their  social  and  emotional  experiences. The present study aimed to evaluate any difference between appearance schema self-evaluative salience among the patients of psoriasis, acne, vitiligo and their controlled counterparts. Total 200 samples, 50 patients (Mean age = 32.8 years, SD= 3.97 years) for each group were chosen following purposive sampling technique from Department of Dermatology, R. G. Kar Medical College, Kolkata, India. The Appearance Schemas Inventory-Revised (ASI-R) was used to measure evaluation of appearance schema of the participants. Results indicate a significantly higher salience of self-evaluative appearance schema in patients with acne, followed by patients with psoriasis, vitiligo and their controlled counterparts. The findings indicate that the control group outperforms their clinical counterparts significantly in self evaluative appearance schema measure.  The effect size measure indicates a small impact of dermatological disorder on self-evaluative appearance schema, indicating though prevails the stigma of dermatological disorders in our society; the patients acquire effective coping strategies to boost their self esteem. Their body image is not primarily guided by evaluation of their appearances. To support this view, it is found that though among these three diseases social stigma is associated more with vitiligo, but the patients with acne have a higher self-evaluative appearance schema. The pattern of the effects of dermatological disorder on self evaluative appearance schema is discussed