NAIL BITING. NOW A MENTAL DISORDER
For some time I’ve been thinking I might have a mental disorder and now I have the proof. I do. I found one. At last.
I have dermatillomania. This is a compulsive behaviour that finds the sufferer (that’s me) habitually picking at skin. Given that I have more pimples in my 40s than I did as a teenager, this is a bit like a full time job.
And now, thanks to fresh news from the American Psychiatry Association, I know it is an illness too.
So is biting your nails and pulling your hair.
Next year a new version of the famed DSM – the very large and getting larger mental disorder manual – will include “pathological grooming” in the same category as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD.
Seriously? How much normal human behaviour can be pathologised?
Normal sadness and grief after death – bereavement – will be considered to be depression. Teenage rebellion is already “oppositional defiance disorder.” Just being a little neurotic and you might be considered as obsessive compulsive.
Back in the day, the weird girl down the road who obsessively cleaned the bricks on her house was just the weird girl down the road who obsessively cleaned the brinks on her house. Otherwise she was Sue, and she got over it.
The DSM-5 – already being criticised as “overly inclusive” – will make patients of all of us. And in turn, it will make customers out of us too – for the drug companies that would treat our disorders.
One doctor has written in the Psychiatric Times: “ DSM5 appears to be promoting what we have most feared–the inclusion of many normal variants under the rubric of mental illness, with the result that the core concept of “mental disorder” is greatly undermined.
This is, perhaps, the most serious implication.
As for me and my disorder, there is an online support group for CSP (Compulsive Skin Picking) sufferers which has nearly 600 members, according to fellow sufferer Joanne Limburg, who writes in Psychology Today.
She asked my fellow sufferers what they would like other people to understand about CSP, and this was one of the answers:
“We’re not crazy. Everyone has that thing they do that they know they shouldn’t. This is ours.”
Exactly. Not. Crazy. It’s just a bad habit, not a sinister sign of some deeper mental malaise that may just happen to require some prescribed medication.
While we might all be varying degrees of crazy, is this taking things a bit too far?
And what bad habit do you have that might be mistaken for a mental disorder?
RELATED ARTICLES
Doctor Google is Making Me Sick!
*Lucy Clark (Editor of The Hoopla) is a journalist and editor with almost thirty years experience in newspapers and magazines in Sydney, London, and New York. She has been published in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Daily and Sunday Telegraphs, Vogue Living, Australian Art Review, and Gourmet Traveller. Most recently the Books Editor of the Sunday Telegraph, she has also contributed to the non-fiction books, Australia Through Time, and What Women Want. You can follow her on twitter: @lucykateclark.
19 Responses to this article
-
Kate October 3, 2012
I realise this is just a light-hearted piece, but it’s actually quite offensive on some levels….
Just because someone might have a condition that is listed in the DSM does not make them CRAZY. I am really a tad gob-smacked that The Hoopla would publish an article which – even in’ humour’ –links the word ‘crazy’ to mental disorders….thanks for building on that particular stigma.
Sure, for some picking up their skin might just be a bad habit. However, if you knew anything about how these conditions are diagnosed, you would know that an individual with simply a ‘bad habit’ would be unlikely to receive a diagnosis. As amusing as you seem to find it, I have no doubt that there are people out there for which skin picking has indeed developed into a dangerous and self-destructive activity, which has the ability to create disorder in their lives. That’s why it’s called a disorder.
I have a child who has a condition lists in the DSM (autism – and there has been lots written about the changes to that particular diagnosis). He is not crazy, he does not have a sinister malaise (as you term conditions listed in the DSM)… he has a disorder and he is also NORMAL.
Oh… and that girl you described as cleaning bricks all day. .. Sure, she might have got over it. But maybe she didn’t. Maybe she developed compulsions and obsessions that tore her life apart. Maybe she asked for help and didn’t receive it. I for one am glad the revised DSM might provide some help for people who previously might have slipped through the cracks.
-
Shell October 3, 2012
Maybe there will be meetings NBA, nail biters annonymous? My name is Michelle and I bite my nails. *clapping*
I have bitten my nails since I was born I think, yeah it’s a bad habit but it’s not really affaceting my life.
The reports about the new DSM seem to be worrying. “oppositional defiance disorder” or maybe just an asshole, moody teen or just thinks what they have been asked to do is wrong.
-
MWS October 3, 2012
I bit my nails until my late teens. It used to drive my dad mad. We made an agreement that I would stop biting my nails if he gave up smoking. Two bad habits eliminated!
I still don’t bite my nails – I just visualise my father smoking instead. I assume he used the same motivation.BTW, do psychiatrists suffer from excessive psychiatric labelling disorder?
-
miss milu! October 3, 2012
I have to say i agree with Kate. Mental illness comes in all forms and varying degrees of severity. One persons non-issue nail biting is very different from anothers self destructive behaviour. I do disagree with over analyzing childrens behaviour, that can set them up for paranoia and hypochondria for life. Kids should be allowed to be kids. But issues that plague people, control their lives and cause emotional trauma have a right to be recognised. Because often recognition is the first step for many people towards letting go of those issues (and perhaps being able to look back on it light heartedly!).
-
Cybele @ BlahBlah Magazine October 4, 2012
DSM and CSP that is very funny. It reminds me that we now have a term for toddler tantrums: Oppositional Defiant Disorder
-
Jenny October 4, 2012
I was a nail-biter for around 30 years, and I can tell you it is a really affecting problem! My nail-beds have never recovered from the damage done to them, aside from the constant discomfort from the raw edges where the nail had been literally torn away. And it made my hands so ugly – I tried to hide them all the time but that was pretty hard to do when all your work involved using them publicly. It was a compulsion I didn’t seem to be able to break, until eventually after my third child was born and I was once again changing dirty nappies – that helped give me the incentive to stop, but it was really hard with lots of back-slipping. I would categorize that level of nail-biting as a disorder for sure.
-
Marnie October 4, 2012
I think it is great that we now have a name for some of the more extremes of common behaviour. It differentiates between things like casual nail biting and destructive,neurotic nail biting, especially for diagnosis purposes, but I can also appreciate that people will use it as fun ‘dig’ . If I forget words or do absent mindedly do something silly, my kids say I have Alzheimers. It isn’t meant to trivialise the disease, it’s just a fun dig. Let’s not get too hung up on political correctness and accept the article as it is meant.
-
liza October 4, 2012
Ayurveda is the best way of understanding human conditions.
vata people often worry and bite their nails.The wind exacerbates these conditions as does cold and Autumn.
Pitta people get hot and angry and lose hair early .They love competition.Have soft nails
Kopha people like calm and water and can be found in pacific Islands. They can become lazy . Prone to fungal infection!Ideally we would all be TRI Doshas which is mostly a balanced approach to life however most of us aint and we are just muddling our way through lifes storms.
-
Diana October 4, 2012
Hi Lucy – I feel a lot better now I know we share a disorder. Not that we have it, or that I share it with you exactly (which would be a bit loopy) but that what I think is my pathetically bad habit that I can’t break, is actually SOMETHING in a book!
I do think your first response – from Kate – was a misunderstanding of what you wrote. To me you’re not trivialising real and often debilitating conditions, but saying that in including more and more “conditions” in this list, the risk is that the serious illnesses are trivialised by the inclusion of trivia. And the trivia is included so practitioners can make more money and drug companies can make more money – and meanwhile, some of us bite our nails and pick at skin.
Nice of you to apologise, but I don’t think there was anything to apologise for. -
Tracy October 4, 2012
I agree with the sentiments expressed in the article. It is very worrying that the system is pathologizing basic everday differences, habits and mannerisms and creating problems where there aren’t any. People will be too ready to label themselves and people of all ages will become obsessed with their apparently bad mental health and bore everyone around them. I have a mother with schizopherenia – and that is a real mental illness that is life changing for the sufferer and the family – so perhaps we should not lose perspective and waste our time with corporate sponsored and medicalized policy that seeks to exploit and control us, often at the expense of those in real need. Have they forgotten depression and suicide – they need ongoing attention .Does psychiatry itself have a short attention span? Should it medicate itself and leave us all alone? And really, if nail biting etc is on the list then what about tattoos and piercings? If we count them then just about everyone would be mad down at my shopping centre.
-
sami October 4, 2012
I have bitten my nails obsessively for over 25 years so far and I just cannot stop. I wear false nails but I end up eventually biting them off and then shredding my nails again. It really does distress me and it hurts, is embarrassing, and probably pretty unhealthy (though I do wash my hands a lot).
If it was genuinelly classed as a disorder at least then I could get help for it somehow. I have tried everything numerous times (YES I have tried the yucky tasting nail polish, it doesn’t deter me). Hypnotherapy seems like a potential treatment but the expense of combined with the fact that I don’t know anyone that can actually recommend a good hypnotherapist means that avenue will probably remain closed to me.
My mum bit her nails too and only stopped when she fell pregnant with me. Hormones or something maybe? Meanwhile I don’t want kids, so that’s written off as a potential cure.
I am tired of nail biting. At least with cigarettes or alcohol or something you can actually avoid those things. My fingernails are at the ends of my hands permanently, so I have no escape
Anyway, there’s worse problems to have so I should not complain. WIll just keep trying to stop.
-
Ro.Watson October 4, 2012
Is order normal or on a continuum? When does disorder slip in? Mmmm…please lie down on the couch and we can unravel these questions and answers together..You have taken the first brave step in acknowledging you have a problem…….
-
Ro.Watson October 4, 2012
Sami~ I was a compulsive nailbiter until I discovered nail clippers~ when the urge comes on ~ I trim…more often than not. I hope this is helpful..
-
sami October 4, 2012
I wish it did Ro, but I have nothing to trim… I bite mine too far down!
The best thing so far is false nails, as long as I reapply them as soon as I bite them off. This is hard to maintain for months on end but I will keep going with it. -
Ro.Watson October 4, 2012
Strangely or not~ depending on your point of view~ in traditional chinese medicine(which accupuncture applies) a lot of important points are located in the fingers and toes..
-
Judith Rubbish October 4, 2012
Does anyone have hints on how to overcome dermatillomania?
-
Rachel October 6, 2012
I understand that this was a lighthearted article, but unfortunately these kind of lighthearted ‘digs’ are what leads to stigma and over trivialising of mental health conditions. It’s what leads people to be afraid to admit they have a problem and need help. I’m reminded of the constant ‘digs’ of Stan Zemanik (have no idea how to spell his name) and guests on Beauty and The Beast when I was growing up, about how ridiculous it was that people claimed suffering from stress was a medical condition, and years later I have been led to a nervous breakdown from stress, and friends have suicided as a result of it, all of us afraid to admit we had a problem and needed help because this was just a ‘normal human condition’. Yes, there are normal human habits and normal human conditions, but it is exactly when these become ‘abnormal’ that help is needed. My mother does indeed have problems with the condition that you have lightheartedly taken a dig at. It is a compulsion she can not control. Her fingers are constantly bleeding, her nails non-existent. She picks at her legs and arms until her skin is raw, and then she picks more. Her flesh is scarred and constantly bleeding, weeping, and/or infected. And she can’t stop. It is linked to other compulsive behaviours, and is indeed a result of emotional and psychological trauma. What may seem like a joke to you is a life-affecting and health-affecting condition for her which is the result of severe abuse in her life. Normal? No. A joke? No. No more than ‘dying of shame’ is. It’s serious condition which requires medical help (btw NOT drugs). To me it’s not being overly politically correct, rather it’s recognition that others don’t always have the same experiences as ourselves, and to class something as ‘normal’ is a surface judgement with no understanding of the facts. It’s the same as debilitating physical illnesses like ME, lupus, fibromyalgia and lymes disease all being dismissed by the public (in similar lighthearted articles) and medical practitioners for generations, because ‘we all get tired. It’s normal!’
