Nail biting, also known as onychophagy or onychophagia, is an oral compulsive habit. It is in some cases depicted as a parafunctional activity, the common use of the mouth for an action other than speaking, eating, or drinking. Nail biting is very common, particularly amongst children. Severe forms of nails biting are viewed as a body focused repetitive behavior (BFRB) in the DSM-IV-R and are ordered under obsessive-compulsive and related disorders in the DSM-5. The ICD-10 characterizes the practice as "other specified behavioural and emotional disorders with onset usually occurring in childhood and adolescence. Other body-focused repetitive behaviors include excoriation disorder (skin picking), dermatophagia (skin biting), and trichotillomania (the urge to pull out hair), and all of them tend to coexist with nail biting. However, not all nail biting is pathological, and the difference between harmful obsession and normal behaviour is not generally clear

Trichotillomania, difficult to pronounce and even more difficult to live with. The disorder is characterised by the strong urges to pull out their own hair. It can affect people of any age. People with trichotillomania pull hair out at the root from places like the scalp, eyebrows, eyelashes, or pubic area.

Learning Life Lessons 

It is said that everything we come across in life has a significient purpose and teaches us something important. Although trichotillomania is not something to wish on anybody, one blogger, Emilie Bélanger, who has lived with trichotillomania since she was 8 years old, says there are important lessons that she learnt from the hair pulling disorder and they are as follows:

Trichotillomania, difficult word to pronounce and even more difficult disorder to live with. A lot of people don’t have a clue on what hair pulling disorder is. It wasn't even officially labelled a disorder until 1987 but studies show that it has existed since evaluation of humankind, unfortunately scientists still aren't sure what causes trichotillomania. But even though there aren’t clear effective ways on how to cure it, there are many who have found ways to manage the behavior and break the cycle.

Break the Stigma

Educate yourself, then educate others, and finally, don't act weird when and if someone "comes out" to you about having the disorder. The more we talk about it the less strange it will seem, and the less isolated sufferers will feel. A lot of disorders are still overlooked and it is up to individuals who understand the disorder to take a stand and let their voice be heard.

Trichotillomania or "trich" is a disorder on the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Spectrum and is portrayed by the overwhelming desire to pull out one's hair and is normally persistent and hard to treat. This usually leads to hair loss or baldness (contingent upon the affected area of pulling), pain and in many cases, functional or social isolation. Epidemiologic studies for trichotillomania have been sorely lacking in the field of scientific research, but there is a growing recognition of the need for prevalence studies to understand how often trichotillomania occurs in different groups of people and why.