Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Dermatillomania: The Enemy on My Skin

Those suffering from dermatillomania pick, pinch, or scratch their skin until it bleeds. Those affected must literally learn to save their own skin.

Vit started almost 30 years ago. Those little pimples that came out with puberty should be gone, and the skin should be smooth and clear again. “I can still remember starting to pick at the pimples until they bled. There was an uneven spot that should go. I scratched, it felt better. So I had to do it again and again.” This is how Cecilia Schwarz, who actually has a different name, describes the beginning of an illness that accompanies the 42-year-old from Frankfurt to this day. She suffers from dermatillomania, also known as skin picking.

Skin picking is one of the so-called “body-related repetitive behaviors”. This mental illness is not counted as self-harm, even if it looks like it at first. Skin picking has been recognized as an independent clinical picture since 2013 and is described as an obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorder, a behavior that sufferers have to repeat over and over again. In concrete terms, this means that those affected want to stop, but cannot. It is estimated that up to three percent of the population will suffer from it at some point in their lives, with the majority of women being affected. The disease usually occurs during puberty or in later adulthood. It was the same with Schwarz: “I had my first flare-up when I was about 13 years old. Then nothing for a long time, maybe because I had started smoking. When I quit smoking at the age of 35, it started again.”