As aesthetics practitioners, we have a fundamental duty of care to protect our patients, so it is vital that before you perform any treatments, you screen all your patients for any potential mental health issues. The best way of doing this is by requiring all clients to attend an initial suitability consultation. Failure to do this adequately can result in dire consequences for the patient that severely impact their well-being and satisfaction with the treatment you have administered and, in the worst case, detrimentally affect your reputation as an aesthetics practitioner leading to a loss of revenue and credibility.

The modern world has created a sharp rise in the number of young adults seeking aesthetic procedures in the last decade involving fillers and other injectable treatments. As an industry that exists primarily to improve the well-being of our patients and which always puts patient safety first, we are duty-bound to consider the reasons that underlie this spike in aesthetic treatments.

One reason is the popularity of social media and celebrity culture, which has led to a considerable increase in cases of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a body image anxiety-related disorder. This condition is particularly prevalent among young women who often feel pressured by their peers to look perfect on social media at all times and are desperate to keep up with often unrealistic demands placed on them. This can lead to them obsessing over minor flaws that are unnoticeable to anyone else and wrongly believing that cosmetic treatments that fix the perceived flaw will ultimately make them happier.

The first thing you need to do to ensure that your patient is suitable for the treatment requested is establish a patient screening procedure at your aesthetic treatment clinic to identify any psychological disorders and highlight any red flags. This procedure needs to be explained to new clients before performing any treatments and must be underpinned by a strict policy for refusing treatment to any patients that display signs of mental health issues.

Once you have established your policy, it needs to be accessible to all prospective patients and all clients must be informed of it and directed to where they can consult it on your website or elsewhere prior to attending their initial consultation.

When you meet your potential patient for the first time, it is essential that you assess their suitability for treatment in person. This can be done by determining their reasons for approaching you for treatment, discussing why they want the treatment and establishing what their expectations are in terms of treatment outcome. There are a plethora of mental health assessment questionnaires available online, but these alone are not sufficient to adequately screen a patient requesting an aesthetic treatment.

It is advisable that, in addition to asking your prospective clients to complete a mental health assessment questionnaire, you speak to them in person before agreeing to treat them. As a healthcare practitioner, you can draw on your medical training and use your empathy and listening skills in a face-to-face consultation to fully explore your potential patient’s reasons for wanting an injectable procedure and identify any potential signs of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) that would represent a red flag for treatment.

Aesthetic treatments are very personal, and the patient will have often spent years deciding to proceed with the treatment. For this reason, it is essential that they feel supported emotionally and trust you as their practitioner implicitly.

One way to gain your patient’s trust and confidence in the initial consultation is by asking open-ended questions, engaging in active listening and exploring the reasons why they want to have the requested cosmetic treatment. In order to do this, you may have to delve into their history and unravel the reasons that led them to seek treatment in the first place.

Allowing your clients sufficient time to answer your questions in full will help build trust and give you a better understanding of their desired outcome and enable you to address any concerns they may have regarding the treatment sought.

It’s also a good idea to repeat their answers back to them to ensure you have understood them clearly and avoid any misunderstanding on your part. Taking the time to invest in the client in this way will ensure a smoother treatment process and help forge a stronger patient-practitioner relationship based on trust.

As a healthcare professional, patient safety and ethical and responsible practice must underpin everything you do. To ensure that your patient is getting the right treatment for their needs, it is crucial that you screen them before agreeing to perform any aesthetic treatment.

In a largely unregulated industry, the onus is on ethical practitioners to raise practice standards and ensure that financial gain does not come before patient well-being.

If, after you have followed your patient screening procedure, you feel that going ahead with the cosmetic treatment is not in the patient’s best interest due to a possible mental health issue, it is imperative that you refer your patient to someone who can help them to deal with the suspected issue and treat their BDD or other psychological disorder appropriately.

Refusing treatment to someone who has their heart set on it and believes that it will solve their problems can be tricky and has to be dealt with delicately. In this situation, you will need to apply empathy and the skills you studied and learnt during your medical training to persuade them to engage with the necessary onward referral who can administer suitable treatment.

As a healthcare professional and aesthetic practitioner, If, in your expert opinion, the best course of action is not going ahead with the treatment requested by the patient, you have a professional duty of care to explain to them why not and where they can find help.

Derma Institute is an award-winning, internationally recognised, doctor-led training academy offering aesthetic training to healthcare professionals. We currently have training centres in the UK, Dubai, Australia and New Zealand and plan to open other centres in Canada, the USA and India later this year. All of our training centres teach the highest standards and the safest and most advanced techniques in aesthetic medicine.