Are breast implants linked to suicide?

Breast implants have become a common surgery across the developed world, but some believe there may be a link between breast implants and suicide. Take a closer look at this startling theory in the following podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stump Mom Never Told You?
From housetop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen and I'm Molly. All Right, Molly, you and

(00:21):
I are talking about breasting plants today and sometimes and
sometimes we like to start off our podcast with a
little personal anecdote about the subject you're talking about. But
you know what, Molly, I'm gonna spare you any breast
related personal stories of mine because I'm not in the

(00:42):
mood for an awkward silence this morning. So I'm just
gonna dive, right, And I think it's safe to say
that when it comes to, uh, you know, the bus line,
the conversation with our mom's probably extends to maybe getting training,
bra talking about sizes, you know, maybe consolation if they
aren't growing too fast or too fast, whatever case. Maybe

(01:04):
just kind of general stuff. Although breast implants are becoming
a more common graduation present, that's true, So you might
have the kind of mom who does discuss with you
breast implants. But my mom didn't back in the day,
I don't think yet. It was wasn't really an option
on the table, so the operating table, nice pun, Molly.

(01:27):
But today breast implants are the most common cosmetic procedure,
followed up by rhinoplasty a k A. Nose jobs and liposuption.
And speaking of breast and plants, well, I think this
would be a good time for you to tell us
a little bit about Japanese prostitute. Right. That's not actually
as awkward to transition as it might sound at first,

(01:49):
because the whole story of breast implants started with Japanese
prostitutes in the nineties. Uh. These women would inject substances
like paraffin or sponge into their breast to increase the
size of their bust line because they're trying to appeal
to all the g I s who were overseas during
World War Two. So we owe all of these um

(02:12):
boob jobs for lack of a better word, to Japanese prostitutes. Yeah,
so fast forwarding them to nineteen sixty two, we have
a little lady named Timmy Jean Lindsay who became the
first woman to undergo breast augmentation surgery using silicone breast implants.
And from there the whole industry has evolved. Yeah, this

(02:34):
is kind of hard to talk about because people have
mixed feelings about this surgery. You know, there are plenty
of people who think that you should just embrace the
way you are and be happy with that. There are
plenty of people who will say, you know, the best
augmentation surgery was the best thing that ever happened to them.
They have tons of confidence, they feel better about themselves.
It's very you know, people will find diseas as they

(02:55):
try and link this too. They'll try and find self
esteem as shoes they can link into. And that's kind
of what we wanted to talk about to day with
a very scary question our breasts implants linked with suicide?
And this sounds sounds pretty doom and gloom. Uh sounds
and you can't get any worse, I think with side
effects than suicide. Yeah, so the reason why we're asking

(03:16):
this question is, Uh, there was a study published in
the August two thousand seven issue of the Annals of
Plastic Surgery that found a pretty strong link between women
who get breast i plants and then later commit suicide.
Write what they did in this experiment. They followed about

(03:36):
thirty five hundred Swedish women who had had breast enhancement
procedures between nineteen sixty five and n and you know,
they ignored women who needed reconstructive surgeries. But we're choosing
to augment their breast for purely cosmetic reasons. They were
just dissatisfied with their bus size. And so out of
that thirty d well three thousand, five d seven women

(04:00):
to be exact, twenty four committed suicide down the road.
And this was the study tracked them from nineteen sixty
five to nine, and uh, that suicide rate is three
times higher then among the general population, sort of startling
three times that's pretty that's pretty huge. That's pretty huge.
But the reason it's important that they followed them for

(04:21):
so long is they wouldn't commit suicide until ten years
after they had the surgery, exactly. It wasn't like they
were going getting their breasts augmented, coming home, recovering, and
then killing themselves. It was much more nuanced than that.
Right ten to nineteen years after the surgery, the suicide
rate was about four point five times greater than women
in the general population, and then twenty years or more

(04:42):
it becomes six times higher. So it's basically, as time
goes on, these women are committing suicide. Why would that
be Well, Molly, I think that you have to take
into account other factors in these women's lives. I don't
think you know, it's this whole issue of correlation is
not causation. It's not saying that, you know, maybe the
silicone in these breasts implants was leaking to their brains

(05:05):
causing to commit suicide or anything like that. Um. For instance,
fourteen women in the study died from drug or alcohol abuse,
which indicates there might have been some more deep seated
problems going on, right, And that rate, it's only fourteen women,
but within that control group, that's three times higher than
the average of the general population. So just these very

(05:27):
small numbers represent huge leaps above what the general populations
got going on. Yeah, and you might be thinking, Okay,
this is one study isolated to Sweden. I mean, are
we just blowing this way out of proportion. Well, it
wasn't just one study. There are actually five other studies
in addition to the one that we were talking about,

(05:47):
that consistently found this link between breasts implants and a
higher suicide rate. Suicide rate between two and three times
higher than than the general population. And within all of
these these researchers found that the women with breasts implants
more often had problems with alcohol and drugs, and were
more likely to be divorced, which are all factors that

(06:09):
can contribute to suicide, right And interestingly to me, compared
to one who get other cosmetic procedures, you know, such
as the nose job, women who receive breast implants are
almost twice as likely to have been admitted to a
psychiatric hospital at some point. But like you mentioned earlier,
plenty of women who get breasts implants will report that
they feel a lot better about themselves, they have a

(06:30):
more positive self image, So certainly we can't conclude that
breast implants are some totally evil, evil things that women
are doing to themselves, right. So what studies like these
have demonstrated to doctors and people in the field is
that perhaps we need better screening before women can have
these procedures, because even if they hadn't gotten the procedure,

(06:54):
they may have still committed suicide. And I think what
they're trying to look into is what uh body image
issues did these women have? What self esteem issues? Might
they have had that would have led them to commit suicide, right, Molly.
I think it's important when we're talking about these psychological
issues surrounding plastic surgery, we can't project the mental health

(07:15):
issues of individuals to the entire population of breast implant patients. UM,
we do have to point out that statistically, around fifteen
pc of people who do get elective plastic surgeries suffered
from something called body dysmor fit disorder, which causes you
to obsess over specific body parts and have an have

(07:37):
an unhealthy perception of your body. Right, and so I
can you know, you just think you're uglier disfasure, which
might be what leads you to get the cosmetic surgery,
but it's not going to fix that sort of you know,
thing in your brain that's telling you, you know, that
things aren't right, which maybe why there's that tenure gap
that we were talking about when we were you know,

(07:57):
emphasizing the fact that was ten years later and maybe
that these surgeries made women feel better for a short time,
but they still couldn't overcome that negative self image. Right.
It was just sort of like a temporary band aid
that you know that wasn't gonna last, and I think
it's important to bring up as well a study on
breast implant psychology that was conducted by a professor of
surgery at the University of California that sort of debunked

(08:20):
this idea of breast implant patients having some kind of
pathological psychological disorder. The researcher found that as a whole,
breast implant patients don't have a lower body image than
the general population. They just have maybe more dissatisfaction with
with their bus lines, just are really hung They might

(08:42):
like their legs, they might think they have a really
cute face, but they just, you know, they just feel
too small. Right. So we're not saying everyone who gets
this surgery is depressed and it's going to commit suicide.
That's not what we're endorsing today. But what the Swedish
study that we were talking about earlier has led people
to think is that there just needs to be better
screening before women are dergo plastic surgery. Right. I think
most of the the most important outcome of all these studies,

(09:05):
like you said, is um recognizing this need for pre
surgery psychological screens and also following these women after surgery.
I mean if you have a patient who is continually
coming in for more and more procedures, there might be
a pretty big red flag that something else is going on,
that this person is actually endangering themselves. So on that

(09:29):
sobering note, if you do want to learn more about
breast implants, we have a wonderful article how breast implants work.
It is very detailed as many pictures. We were going
to discuss how breast implants a prens body, but you've
got to see these pictures. I'm a visual learner. They helped.
They might not be safe for work, but all the same,
they're on our site. And the article our breast implants
linked to suicide, written by Jacob Silverman, is also at

(09:51):
how stuff works dot com. But morely, before we go,
I think we need to read some really happy your
email to to sort of balance out this sort of
sobering a more depressing podcast episode. Yeah, we've got some
happy listener mail to share with you today. Yeah, we

(10:12):
need to offer our congratulations to our listener Shane, who
is getting married this month, and he wrote in after
listening to our podcast on diamonds and he wanted to
tell us a very sweet story about how he designed
a one of a kind engagement ring for his soon

(10:33):
to be wife. Right, so, Shane listened to our Diamonds
really a Girl's best Friend, and before he was going
to pop the question, he knew he needed a ring,
but he didn't think that diamonds were a girl's best friend.
He thought they were very impersonal, boring. You know. He
was on track with what we were talking about on
that podcast. So what he did, he wanted something more personal,
and he and his fiance like hiking, so they had

(10:55):
gone to uh moab Utah to climb together, and then
without her knowing, he climbed back up the hill and
got a rock from the tower they had climbed, and
he took it to a jeweler. Yeah, I'm picking it
up in there. I'll pick it up from here. Um.
So he took the rock to a jeweler, and at
first Shane was upset because he wanted to get a

(11:15):
piece of calcite out of the rock, but the jewelers
said that calcite was too soft, and then uh the
rock also could stain some sandstone, which was also too
soft to make a ring out of it. So the
jeweler said that he would grind the rock down and
see if there was anything hard inside of it, and
lo and behold there was a layer of natural onyx

(11:37):
that was usable for a ring. And so he got
the onyx, set it in white gold, and then repelled
out of the rafters of the dance club that his
fiance DJs at and proposed to her. It's it's a
really cool story, and she said, yes I would after
all that. Yeah, And he sent us a photo of
the ring, and Shane, if you're listening, hit us gorgeous.

(12:00):
So congratulations to Shane. Shane is living proof that more
than diamonds can be a girl's best friend. Nice one, Molly,
So if you have any questions, comments, or colorful anecdotes
you would like to send our way, feel free to
email me and Molly at mom stuff at how stuff
works dot com for moral thiss and thousands of other topics.

(12:23):
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