Comparison of the disturbance in mental image of the body in patients with major depression disorder and non-depressed persons

Mental image of body is the image and feeling of a person from size and form of his own body and its constituent elements in the mind. The purpose of this study was to investigate the disturbances in mental image of the body in patients with major depression disorder (MDD) and comparison with non-depressed persons, using draw-a-person test.

In this case-control study, 30 patients with MDD, admitted in psychiatric ward of Hamadan Farshchian hospital, were selected randomly. Thirty non-depressed persons, whom the demographic characteristics such as sex, age, academic education and marital status were matched with the case group, were selected as control group. All the subjects were assessed by structured psychiatric interview and toy-man test (draw-a-person) with McHover method. The data were analyzed by means of SPSS version 16 at the significant level of P<0.05.

The comparison of the drawings was indicative of higher incidence of deleting & misplacing of organs, nonstandard dimensions, deformity of the image, false proportion of organs, using geometrical figures for drawing and false positioning of the image in the case group comparing with the controls (P<0.01 for all). No significant difference was observed between the two groups, regarding the picture transparency.

The disturbance of mental image of a MDD patient about the shape of his own body may indicative of the changes in the cortical and perceptual processes of brain.