Body-focused repetitive behaviors, such as nail biting, skin picking, and compulsively pulling out one’s hair (trichotillomania), affect about 5% of the population. In a story from NBC News, Natasha Bailen, PhD, a clinical psychologist at the Center for OCD and Related Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses a new approach — known as habit replacement — that may help reduce these problematic behaviors.
The new approach is a variation of other behavioral techniques used to manage body-focused repetitive behaviors, specifically habit reversal training and decoupling. Basically the goal of the intervention is to replace the sometimes pleasurable ritual of picking and pulling with something that is also pleasurable but less likely to cause damage. In this study, the researchers used gentle touch as a substitute.
New research suggests that gentle touch could help stop nail-biting and skin picking(NBC News)
