Morbid concern over body image was considered, until recently, a female issue. Nowadays, it has been viewed as a common male disorder. Muscle dysmorphia, a subtype of a body dysmorphic disorder, affects men who, despite having clear muscular hypertrophy, see themselves as frail and small. Besides being associated to major social, leisure and occupational dysfunction, muscle dysmorphia is also a risk factor for the abuse of steroids and other substances. This work describes epidemiological, etiological and clinical characteristics of muscle dysmorphia and comments on its treatment strategy.

We searched for scientific articles about this topic on the databases MEDLINE, LILACS and PsycINFO, using the search words “muscle dysmorphic disorder”. We chose to preferentially include original articles and recent reviews.