I have always been a picker. I remember it from my earliest playground knee grazes—the irresistible urge to peel off the scab as soon as it formed; to see the bright white flesh beneath. I knew I wasn ...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - For patients with chronic skin picking, a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder, that is severe enough to cause physical damage, results of a small study suggest that the ...

Skin picking is often brushed off as a bad habit or a lack of willpower, but for many people it is neither simple nor voluntary. Dermatillomania, also known as excoriation disorder, is a clinically ...

Who among us hasn’t picked at a scab or a particularly juicy whitehead before? As isolated incidents, they’re not usually cause for alarm, but when the picking and prodding becomes habitual, that’s ...

Although my skin-picking past is written all over my face, it doesn't make me any less beautiful. If you saw my face in person, you would notice that it is covered from chin to forehead in pockmarks.

Scabs get a bad reputation because they’re dry, crusty, and inconvenient, but they are one of the body’s most effective protection systems. From a biological standpoint, a scab is your skin’s ...

I sat nervously in the exam room, staring at the floor as my mom sat nearby. At age ten, I’d never been to a dermatologist before, and I didn’t know what to expect. My pessimistic mind pictured a ...

A fear of being alone triggered my new habit. It was almost the holidays, and another good friend — one of the few left unmarried — became engaged. Immediately, the fear I'd had since childhood of ...

Against the advice of dermatologists (and skincare articles) everywhere, pimple popping is practically a national pastime. Who hasn’t awoken to a pesky, juicy whitehead just begging to be squeezed?