Whether hair pulling, skin picking or cheek biting, body-focused repetitive behaviours blight many people’s lives. How can science help us understand and treat these distressing conditions better? Christina Pearson was 14 years old when she started pulling out her hair, creating bald patches on her head. She was taken to a psychiatrist, but in 1970 there was no name for her disorder, and certainly no treatment.

Categories: Articles, Writing • Tags: amino acid, anxiety, As/Is, Ashly, BFRB, BFRBs, Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors, BuzzFeed, DSM, glutamate, Hair Pulling, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Mosaic Science, N-acetylcysteine, NAC, neuroscience, neurotransmitter, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, OCD, parasitosis, psychiatry, psychology, Pulling Hair out, Sara Talpos, Science, skin picking, Stigma, trich, Trichotillomania