Currently submitted to: JMIR Dermatology
Date Submitted: Jun 28, 2026
Open Peer Review Period: Jul 13, 2026 - Sep 7, 2026
(currently open for review)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Skin Picking in Online Fiction: Representation of Dermatillomania on Archive of Our Own
ABSTRACT
Dermatillomania (skin picking disorder) affects an estimated 1.4% to 5.4% of the general population, yet up to 78% of affected individuals never receive treatment. This cross-sectional metadata analysis of 691 dermatillomania-related works on Archive of Our Own found that while fiction authors depict skin picking with considerable physical and emotional detail, clinical framing was rare and no character was advised to seek professional help for skin picking. These findings raise questions about the potential public health implications of online fiction for a predominantly young adult readership, for whom such portrayals may represent a first point of contact with the condition prior to any clinical interaction.
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© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.