Kolkata psychiatrist develops selfie addiction scale

KOLKATA: How many selfies do you click in a day? A dozen, perhaps. Does this make you a selfie addict? To find out, you can now get yourself measured on the 'Solanki Scale'. But you'll just have to wait a while till it gets officially registered in the name of Awadhesh P Solanki, a practising psychiatrist who first came up with the idea of studying the trend of clicking selfies while completing his post-graduation from the Institute of Psychiatry, Kolkata.
Solanki's initiative turned out to be a full-fledged research and he came up with the scale to measure a person's selfie addiction.
In June this year, Solanki was one of 10 professionals from across the world who got an opportunity to elaborate on his research at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Later this year, he will be attending a world congress on psychiatry at Cape Town where he plans to reveal more details about the 'Solanki Scale'.
"Clicking selfies has now turned into an addiction. There have been reports of people trying to kill themselves after failing to click the best selfie. People have also died trying to click selfies at unusual and unsafe places. My research included students aged between 18 and 28 from three reputable schools and colleges each.There were an equal number of male and female subjects. I found that the sex of an individual doesn't matter when it comes to clicking selfies. Between 20-24% of my subjects were selfie addicts," Solanki said.
The doctor's research came up with several interesting facts regarding the different attitudes of men and women when they click selfies. He discovered that for women, looks matter a lot while clicking selfies, but for men the location is most important. A woman cares more about her features when she clicks a selfie. You would rarely find a woman clicking a selfie when she isn't sure she looks good. This is why women sometimes click selfies even in places like washrooms just after they have put on make-up.For them, the surroundings don't really matter. Some women also told me that they select their male partners or boyfriends on the basis of `selfie compatibility'," said Solanki.
"In other words, she tries to imagine how a certain man would look in the selfie with her before deciding whether he would be right for her. For men, however, it is different.They are more of show-offs.You would find them posing beside a monument or on the parapet of a 20-storied building.Sometimes they take risks to boast about it later to their friends. For men, the surroundings matter more than their looks," Solanki added.
The doctor, who has already tried out his scale on many people of either sex, claims the results are 96% correct. He, however, refuses to reveal much about the scale before it gets registered, fearing plagiarism.
All he says is that the scale will help him as well as others to diagnose when an innocent pastime turns into a deadly addiction.