ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Psychopathology
This article is part of the Research TopicPsychological Factors as Determinants of Medical Conditions, Volume IVView all articles
The Impact of Body Image Disturbances on Social Avoidance in Burn Patients
Provisionally accepted
- Beijing Anzhen Nanchong Hospital of Capital Medical University & Nanchong Central Hospital, Nanchong, China
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Background: Body image serves as an auxiliary to nonverbal communication, facilitating the transmission of nonverbal information in interpersonal interactions. However, burn patients often experience body image disturbances due to scarring, skin pigmentation changes, and functional impairments, leading to communication difficulties and social anxiety. Regrettably, this phenomenon has received limited in-depth exploration in previous research. Methods: To address this gap, this study, based on the fear-avoidance model, randomly recruited 286 patients to analyze the impact of body image disturbances on social avoidance and its internal mechanisms. Results: The experimental results demonstrated that burn patients with higher levels of body image disturbances exhibited stronger tendencies toward social avoidance. In this process, psychological resilience could mitigate the adverse effects of body image disturbances on social avoidance by enhancing individuals' adaptability. Burn patients with high family support often exhibited more positive cognitions of their body image, enhanced their psychological resilience, and improved their social avoidance. Conclusion: This study further deepened and expanded the fear-avoidance model by proposing a collaborative intervention framework involving family support and psychological resilience. These findings offer new practical suggestions for clinical practitioners and family members to enhance the interpersonal communication skills of burn patients.
Keywords: burn patients, Body image disturbances, Social avoidance, Familysupport, psychological resilience
Received: 28 Sep 2025; Accepted: 20 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Huang, Li, Yue, Shi, Lei and Jiang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Ying Lei, 544084706@qq.com
Ting Jiang, jiangting0823@163.com
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