Bite Your Nails? Pick Your Skin? Pull Your Hair? Animal Research Suggests New Human Treatments
Problematic body-focused repetitive behaviors can be embarrassing and harmful. Learn why people struggle with them and what can be done.
Hair-pulling, nail-biting, and skin-picking are grooming behaviors that most people engage in at least occasionally. But excessive engagement in these habits can rise to the level of a disorder, causing disfigurement, intense shame, and social avoidance. Perhaps surprisingly, insights gained from animal research are leading to improvement in treatment for these conditions.
Collectively, psychologists refer to hair-pulling (trichotillomania), skin-picking (excoriation, or dermatillomania) and nail-biting (onychotillomania) as “body focused repetitive behaviors” (BFRB). These human disorders have been studied far less extensively than similar behaviors in primates and rodents. Animal research implicates glutamate, the most abundant neurotransmitter in the brain, as having a role in extensive engagement in these behaviors.
Although medications may help in isolated human cases, until recently, most drugs did not appear to consistently or pervasively help control BFRB. The mainstay for treatment has been behavioral…
