Breast implants: higher suicide rate suggests cosmetic surgery not the answer to life's ills

If cosmetic surgery brought happiness, I guess we'd all be doing it. But evidence that this is far from the case comes in a disturbing new study of Swedish women reported in this story on irishhealth.com. Women with breast implants are three times more likely to commit suicide or to die from drug or alcohol-related causes than other women, a new study has indicated, says the story.

Researchers at the International Epidemiology Institute in Maryland and the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee, in a detailed follow-up of an earlier study, looked at data on 3,527 Swedish women who underwent cosmetic breast implantation from 1965 to 1994 at an average age of 32.

After an average 18.7 years of follow-up, there were 175 deaths among the women with implants. This was a 30% higher than the expected all-cause mortality rate.

Suicide was three times more common among women with implants than the rate in the general population. Deaths related to mental disorders were also higher among women with breast implants

Does this mean, I wonder, that these women had looked to breast implants to resolve life's normal problems and that they despaired when their problems returned? Or were breast implants just one of many options they had tried unsuccessfully?

It suggests to me that women or men who are thinking of plastic surgery should see it as something they use to deal with a specific physical issue but not as something that will resolve wider problems.....