Addicted to tanning?

They keep tanning, even after turning a deep brown and experiencing some of the negative consequences. Skin cancer is among the most common, preventable types of the disease, yet many continue to tan to excess.

Research from Lisham Ashrafioun, a Bowling Green State University Ph.D. student in psychology, and Dr. Erin Bonar, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan Addiction Research Center and a BGSU alumna, shows that some who engage in excessive tanning may also be suffering from obsessive-compulsive (OCD) and body dysmorphic disorders (BDD). Ashrafioun and Bonar also looked at whether tanning should be classified as an addiction.

Their paper, "Tanning Addiction and Psychopathology: Further Evaluation of Anxiety Disorders and Substance Abuse," is currently in press in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology and will be published later this year.

"While more research is needed regarding to idea of tanning as an addiction, this study suggests that some people who tan also experience mental health symptoms that warrant further assessment," said Bonar. "Although tanning behavior could be separate and distinct from these concerns, it's possible that the symptoms of OCD or BDD are contributing to the tanning in some way. For these people, prevention messages and public health campaigns may not be as helpful, but further assessment and treatment could be."

Respondents who answered yes to at least three of the eight criteria on the Tanning-DSM were considered tanning dependent. The Tanning-DSM is a modified version of substance abuse criteria provided by the 4th Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Those who answered yes to two of the four questions on the tanning-specific version of the CAGE alcohol screener were considered to have problematic tanning.

Out of 533 tanning BGSU students who took the questionnaire, 31 percent met the criteria for tanning dependence and 12 percent for problematic tanning.

In further analysis, being female and screening positive for body dysmorphic disorder and OCD were significantly associated with tanning dependence. In the model for problematic tanning, only screening positive for obsessive-compulsive disorder was significantly related.

How Tanning Changes the Brain People who frequently use tanning beds experience changes in brain activity during their tanning sessions that mimic the patterns of drug addiction, new research shows.

Scientists have suspected for some time that frequent exposure to ultraviolet radiation has the potential to become addictive, but the new research is the first to actually peer inside the brains of people as they lay in tanning beds.

What the researchers found was that several parts of the brain that play a role in addiction were activated when the subjects were exposed to UV rays. The findings, which appear in the coming issue of the journal Addiction Biology, may help explain why some people continue to tan often despite awareness about risks such as skin cancer, premature aging and wrinkles.