Nailed it!
A latest approach was shown to assist 53% of participants in a six-week study geared toward easing body-focused repetitive behaviors comparable to nail-biting, hair-plucking and skin-picking.
The habit substitute strategy involves touching skin gently, comparable to by frivolously rubbing fingertips together or rubbing the palm or back of the arm, a minimum of twice a day, in response to research published Wednesday in JAMA Dermatology.
The TLC Foundation for Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors reports about 5% of the worldwide population has these mannerisms, which might result in scabs, scars and bald spots.
Some 268 people — who had trichotillomania, a condition where people react to emphasize by pulling out hair, or by chronic nail- or cheek-biting habits — participated within the study.
They were split into two random groups. One was tasked with habit substitute while the opposite was told they were waitlisted for treatment. This latter group was trained on habit substitute at the tip of the study.
Around 80% said they were satisfied with the training for the self-help intervention, while 86% would recommend it to others.
“The rule is just to the touch your body frivolously,” lead study writer Steffen Moritz, head of the clinical neuropsychology working group at University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany, told NBC News. “If you happen to’re under stress, you may perform the movements faster, but not with more self-applied pressure.”
Study authors noted more research is required, but they hope the approach could join tried-and-true techniques for body-focused repetitive behaviors, comparable to decoupling — which involves beginning to perform a habit, but changing it up on the last minute.
For instance, nail-biters are told to place their fingers toward their mouth before redirecting them to their ear, nose or one other point away from their mouth.
“I might say one-third to half of the patients with BFRB profit from decoupling, but the remainder don’t,” Moritz said. “And so the concept was to seek out one other technique that is probably more suitable for these nonresponders.”
Habit reversal therapy, meanwhile, requires reducing the cues that result in the problematic behavior and developing a competing response.
“So, they may involve, for instance, clenching your fists really tight when you’ve got an urge to tug your hair or pick your skin. It may be sitting in your hands,” Natasha Bailen, a clinical psychologist on the Center for OCD and Related Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, explained to NBC News.
Medications like antidepressants may help some victims, although none have been specifically approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat these conditions.