16 Facts About Excoriation disorder

Excoriation disorder, more commonly known as dermatillomania, is a mental disorder on the obsessive–compulsive spectrum that is characterized by the repeated urge or impulse to pick at one's own skin, to the extent that either psychological or physical damage is caused.

Individuals with excoriation disorder vary in their picking behaviour; some do it briefly multiple times a day, while others can do one picking session that can last for hours.

Complications arising from excoriation disorder include infection at the site of picking, tissue damage, and sepsis.

Common hypothesis is that excoriation disorder is often a coping mechanism to deal with elevated levels of turmoil, boredom, anxiety, or stress within the individual, and that the individual has an impaired stress response.

Excoriation disorder is defined as "repetitive and compulsive picking of skin which results in tissue damage".

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Individuals with excoriation disorder often do not seek treatment for their condition, largely due to feelings of embarrassment, alienation, lack of awareness, or belief that the condition cannot be treated.

Small studies of fluoxetine, an SSRI, in treating excoriation disorder showed that the drug reduced certain aspects of skin picking compared with a placebo, but full remission was not observed.

One small study of patients with excoriation disorder treated with citalopram, another SSRI, showed that those who took the drug significantly reduced their scores on the Yale –Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale compared with a placebo, but that there was no significant decrease on the visual-analog scale of picking behavior.

In some patients, excoriation disorder begins with the onset of acne in adolescence, but the compulsion continues even after the acne has gone away.

Additionally, many cases of excoriation disorder have been documented to begin in children under the age of 10.

Excoriation disorder is statistically more common in females than in males.

Excoriation disorder has a high rate of comorbidity with other psychiatric conditions, especially with mood and anxiety disorders.

Excoriation disorder has a high degree of comorbidity with occupational and marital difficulties.

Substance use is often present, and individuals with excoriation disorder are twice as likely to have first-degree relatives who have substance use disorders than those without the condition.

Excoriation disorder has been the subject of several episodes of Obsessed, a television documentary series that focuses on the treatment of anxiety disorders.

Excoriation disorder is shown as a symptom of Nina Sayers' anxiety and OCD in the movie Black Swan.