What is the best treatment for excoriation disorder?
Excoriation (skin-picking) disorder is treated with a variety of psychotropic medications. Attempts to treat it with a variety of psychotropic medication classes include antipsychotic agents, antianxiety agents, antidepressant agents, topical cortisone agents, and antiepileptic agents.
What causes excoriation disorder?
Stress or mental health conditions: During times of stress, people might pick or scratch their skin, pull their hair, or bite their nails to relieve it. Others might feel compelled to pick their skin as a form of self-grooming or in an attempt to remove real or imagined imperfections in the skin.
Does excoriation disorder go away?
Dermatillomania is a life-long condition because of the risk of relapse. However, people with this condition can go into remission — meaning, they no longer feel the urge to pick their skin or can avoid doing it for long periods, if not indefinitely.
What does excoriation disorder look like?
Excoriation disorder (also referred to as chronic skin-picking or dermatillomania) is a mental illness related to obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is characterized by repeated picking at one’s own skin which results in skin lesions and causes significant disruption in one’s life.
What are the characteristics of excoriation disorder?
Individuals with excoriation disorder generally have difficulty resisting the urge to pick and often believe their behavior cannot be altered or changed (Kress & Paylo, 2015). Typically, there are two types of picking behaviors: behaviors that are automatic and behaviors that are focused (Christenson & Mackenzie, 1994).
Do people with excoriation disorder pick on their wounds?
Although those with excoriation disorder might go to great efforts to conceal their wounds from others (Grant & Odlaug, 2009), they are likely to admit to skin picking behaviors when effectively questioned by a mental health professional (APA, 2013).
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, specifically Fluoxetine (Prozac), have been shown to be effective in treating excoriation disorder and other BFRB (Grant et al., 2012; Simeon et al., 1997). However, this effect has not been consistent across clients (Grant & Odlaug, 2009).
What is excoriation disorder (dermatillomania)?
Excoriation disorder (also referred to as chronic skin-picking or dermatillomania) is a mental illness related to obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is characterized by repeated picking at one’s own skin which results in skin lesions and causes significant disruption in one’s life.