My compulsive hair pulling and skin picking could be solved with a precision medicine approach

President Obama’s call for the scientific community to embrace a precision medicine revolution gave me hope for some forward motion on two disorders I’ve quietly struggled with since my adolescence: trichotillomania and dermatillomania. Taking a precision medicine approach to these two conditions, which run under the radar of the medical establishment, could answer some longstanding clinical questions and potentially identify the first-ever effective treatments for them.

Trichotillomania, also known as hair-pulling disorder, and its cousin, dermatillomania, or skin-pulling disorder, are grouped together with other related conditions as (BFRBs). These aren’t “bad habits.” Instead they are complex, grooming-related mental illnesses that cause people to inflict damage on their bodies in