Awareness

Learn how BFRB Awareness Week came to be and why awareness for Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs) is needed. Community members share their inspiring stories of hope, resiliency, and recovery, along with why #BFRBweek is important and what it means to them.

Not all access to mental health resources is built equally. And for people of color, access to resources for body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) does not come as easily as you might think or hope. For the most part, even BFRB organizations and groups with a special focus on people of color have gotten a welcome and appreciative reception. People are glad to have a place that recognizes their unique struggles.

Finding help for BFRBs, such hair pulling and skin picking, can be difficult if you do not live in the USA. Learn about the seven ways you can begin your road to recovery.

From dermatological issues to other mental health afflictions, excoriation disorder can be misdiagnosed as many conditions before being properly addressed and treated.

When celebrities talk about skin picking, their platform brings much-needed awareness for excoriation disorder and other body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs). Many of these influential figures have come out with their struggle, helping to shed stigma and reaching many who still suffer in silence and shame.

While efforts have gone a long way to inform the population about the existence of BFRBs, people with visible marks can be mistaken for having a skin disorder, or a stigmatizing condition such as AIDS. People with dermatillomania can also be stereotyped as unhygenic, based on tropes that people with acne don’t take care of their hygiene or diet. These immediate judgments can have devastating emotional consequences for someone sensitive to the appearance of their skin, causing them to isolate and have an increase of social anxiety (among other possibilities).

It’s hard to accept a condition that you didn’t want and never asked for. The difficulty in coming to terms with having a mental health disorder that causes visible wounds on the skin can be overwhelming in day-to-day life. How can a person look at their skin and be okay with what they see? I learned how

The senior years of elementary school would have been the perfect time to learn about these mental health afflictions at an age-appropriate level. If taught from a simple, non-judgmental, place I would have still felt alienated as I did in grade six when peers would look at me in health class during discussions about acne as if I was going to add in a personal perspective.

With awareness of Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs) beginning to gain traction across the world, it is important to discuss how disorders such as dermatillomania affects a person’s quality of life. From social isolation to embarrassment of marks, most people who compulsively pick at their skin keep it a secret so that they won’t be judged […]

Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRB’s) are a group of obsessive-compulsive and related disorders that describes a chronic behavior that causes damage to oneself repetitively, often in order to feel psychological relief. It is important for the public to understand how much people with trichotillomania, dermatillomania, and other BFRB’s struggle and how awareness of these disorders can improve the lives of sufferers.

When learning about the existence of dermatillomania, many people begin to worry if they, too, have this disorder because they pick their skin. How do you know if you have a compulsion or pesky “habit”? When does picking your skin become a disorder?

It is important that we eliminate all misconceptions about excoriation disorder (aka, dermatillomania) and spread the word before these common myths become attached to this condition. Many of us have already heard many of the falsehoods listed below, so we need to make sure that these reflections don’t become accepted views on what dermatillomania is and how it affects us.