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Consistently Taking Selfies May be Sign of Mental Illness

Accepted submission by Apparition at 2018-01-16 01:07:58
Science

Psychologists claim that taking three or more selfies a day could be a sign of mental illness [weforum.org].

In 2014, a spoof news article coined the term "selfitis," saying that the American Psychiatric Association was going to start recognising it as a real disorder.

Three years on, two researchers have looked at the term and have decided there could be some truth to it.

Psychologists Mark D. Griffiths and Janarthanan Balakrishnan have published a paper in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction [springer.com], in which they argue that selfitis is a real condition, and can be diagnosed as excessive selfie taking.

They also developed a "Selfitis Behaviour Scale" by surveying the selfie behaviour of 400 participants from India. The scale assesses the severity of the condition, of which there are three levels.

India was chosen for the study as the country has the most selfie-related deaths [washingtonpost.com]. Out of 127 selfie-related deaths that have been reported worldwide between March 2014 and September 2016, 76 occurred in India.


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