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Associated with numerous adverse health outcomes, body dissatisfaction in young men requires close examination. This study explores online accounts relating to male body image, including young men's personal disclosures within one online newspaper article, and posts responding to this topic. Discursively informed thematic analysis indicated that non-disclosure was considered a problematic social expectation by the young men featured in the article. Also, reader posts variously constructed body dissatisfaction as a symptom of adolescence, a lack of self-care and an incapacity to capitalise on compensatory qualities. Our analysis suggests young men may welcome safe opportunities to critically discuss prevailing body image ideals.

Objective: To examine men's body dissatisfaction qualitatively., Design: Forty-two British men aged 18-45 years took part in a two-session group intervention across 12 groups. The intervention was designed to improve body dissatisfaction by engaging them in a critique of the appearance ideal through written and behavioural exercises. Main outcome measures/results: Analysis of the topics discussed during the intervention generated two core themes. Theme 1 showed that, in general, men minimised the existence of their own body dissatisfaction while (somewhat surprisingly) outlining the ubiquity and potency of the appearance ideal for men in general. Theme 2 involved men reporting the problematic impact of body dissatisfaction in their lives (despite earlier minimisation), such as social avoidance, strict eating and supplement regimes, or difficulty in situations where the body was exposed., Conclusion: The results stress the need to acknowledge that men experience a range of impacts of body dissatisfaction beyond clinical presentations (such as disordered eating) that influence their everyday lives, while also recognising that they tend to minimise this dissatisfaction in conversation. These findings have important implications for advocacy and interventions to improve men's body dissatisfaction.

This pilot study evaluated a body image intervention for men, Body Project M. Seventy-four British undergraduate men took part in two 90-min intervention sessions, and completed standardised assessments of body image, bulimic pathology, and related outcomes at baseline, post-intervention, and 3-month follow-up. Fifty-three other men completed the questionnaires as an assessment-only control group. Per-protocol analysis showed that Body Project M improved men's dissatisfaction with body fat and muscularity, body appreciation, muscularity enhancing behaviours, appearance comparisons, and internalization (ds=0.46-0.80) at post-intervention. All except dissatisfaction with muscularity and internalization were sustained at 3-month follow-up. No effects were found for bulimic pathology. Post-intervention effects for dissatisfaction with muscularity and internalization only were retained under intention-to-treat analysis. Participants were favourable towards the intervention. This study provides preliminary evidence for the acceptability and post-intervention efficacy of Body Project M. Further development of the intervention is required to improve and sustain effects., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

With little actual appraisal, a more 'appearance potent' (i.e., a reverence for appearance ideals) subculture has been used to explain gay men's greater body dissatisfaction in comparison to straight men's. This study sought to assess the respective appearance potency of each subculture by a content analysis of 32 issues of the most read gay (Attitude, Gay Times) and straight men's magazines (Men's Health, FHM) in the UK. Images of men and women were coded for their physical characteristics, objectification and nudity, as were the number of appearance adverts and articles. The gay men's magazines featured more images of men that were appearance ideal, nude and sexualized than the straight men's magazines. The converse was true for the images of women and appearance adverts. Although more research is needed to understand the effect of this content on the viewer, the findings are consistent with a more appearance potent gay male subculture., (Crown Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background: Perceptual embodiment of an artificial limb aids manual control of prostheses and can be facilitated by somatosensory feedback. We hypothesised that transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) may facilitate perceptual embodiment of artificial limbs., Objective: To determine the effect of TENS on perceptual embodiment of an artificial hand in 32 intact-limbed participants., Methods: Participants were exposed to four experimental conditions in four counterbalanced blocks: (i) Vision (V) watching an artificial hand positioned congruently to the real hand (out of view); (ii) Vision and strong non-painful TENS in the real hand (V+T); Vision and Stroking (V+S) of the artificial and real hand with a brush; Vision, Stroking and TENS (V+S+T) watching artificial hand being stroked whilst real hand was stroked and receiving TENS., Results: Repeated measure ANOVA detected effects for Condition (P< 0.001), Block (P< 0.001) and Condition x Block interaction (P< 0.001). Pairwise comparisons detected more intense perceptual embodiment for V+S+T compared with V (P< 0.001) and V+T (P< 0.001), and for V+S compared with V (P< 0.001) and V+T (P< 0.001).The intensity of perceptual embodiment increased for later blocks (P< 0.001)., Conclusions: A sensation of TENS was generated within the artificial hand in individuals with intact limbs and this facilitated perceptual embodiment. The magnitude of effect was modest.

Integration of prosthetic limb awareness into body schema is likely to aid manual control of the prosthesis. Physiotherapists and prosthetists use techniques to generate mechanical, visual and/or auditory feedback related to stimulation of the stump and proximal residual limb to improve prosthetic limb awareness. Electrical stimulation of afferent nerves using implanted electrodes can generate sensations of touch, joint movement, and position, in the missing, phantom limbs of amputees. We report here a novel hypothesis that non-invasive transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) could be used to facilitate the process of perceptual embodiment of a prosthesis into the body schema of amputees. Using a modified version of the rubber hand illusion (RHI), we have found that TENS paraesthesiae can be made to feel like it is emanating from a prosthetic hand in healthy participants with intact limbs. In addition, participants reported perceptual embodiment of the prosthetic hand into their body schema, i.e. it felt as if it is part of their body. We predict that projecting TENS paraesthesiae into the prosthetic limb(s) of amputees will provide sufficient sensory input to facilitate perceptual embodiment. This could prove to be a simple and inexpensive training aid to improve ambulation and prosthesis success.

Minor life events were examined in an attempt to determine their contribution to athletic injury risk. Male and female athletes (N = 98), from both team and individual sports (hockey, volleyball, and triathlon) were examined over the course of a competitive season. A high rate of injury was noted among these athletes (30%-46% of the members of each team sustained at least one injury during the season). The injured athletes were found to have a significant increase in minor life events for the week prior to injury. No significant changes in minor life events occurred for the non-injured athletes. The results of the present study provide substantial evidence for a link between minor life events and athletic injury.