How to help a friend suffering from BDD?

[Locut0s]

I have a friend who has SERIOUS BDD. Body Dysmorphic Disorder, you may have to look it up if you don't know what this is. His problem resolves around his face. He believes that he constantly sees new "permanent flaws" in his face that won't go away and continually monitors his face all the time. He keeps a log book of his face and enters new stuff in it every days. Things like small pimples and spider veins and lost eye lashes and who knows what. Thing is the guys is actually of above average handsomeness and his face couldn't be smoother or more blemish free most of the time. NO one can see the issues that are wrong with his face accept him and everyone tells him the same. But he refuses to believe that this is an emotional problem and will ONLY accept that it is a real physical issue, he will NOT accept that ANYTHING he sees is in any way emotionally driven. And yet he is willing to call it BDD because that is the label he has been given. It's clear from anyone talking to him that it's entirely emotional. He has other emotional issues as well that he refuses to deal with, the guys obviously has serious OCD and other similar issues and is neurotic to the point of abstraction. He does have one real physical issue with his face that probably triggered all the rest of this. He has a sebaceous gland issue that requires him to manually remove the sebum from under his skin or else he will break out in an itchy rash. This means that he has to periodically perform manual remove of this sebaceous fluid, I imagine it's similar to popping zits, etc... I realize this is a hard issue to deal with but all the rest of the blemishes and other things he thinks he sees on his face that make him so "ugly" ARE NOT THERE.

Now believe me I'm talking from the point of view of someone who knows emotional pain, I myself suffer from sever depression and anxiety issues that have crippled my life. However my issues don't revolve around my appearance so I have difficulty relating specifically to this issue. It's his stubbornness and complete unwillingness to accept that there is an emotional component involved that I have the most difficulty dealing with. I am far from solving my own emotional problems but I have insight into the fact that they are emotional issues and that I need to get help. How do I get him to see he needs help? I'm no psychiatrist but I believe his issues stem from his upbringing and more specifically his mother that he still lives with. His home environment is emotionally VERY strange and IMHO toxic to him, but he would be completely unwilling to see any of that.

He has even related to me issues in his past where he became violent with family members and police were called in and he ended up with a minor criminal record. He didn't hurt anyone and now tells it like it's all a silly joke in the past that was way overblown but to me this just SCREAMS deep seated family issues.