Children’s scratching and itching: What can I do?

Children with skin conditions such as eczema and psoriasis may often scratch
their skin. It is well known that scratching can significantly worsen the symptoms
of skin disease, sometimes causing infection. It has been common for scratching
behaviour to be viewed as a habit much like any other habit, repeated because it
effectively brought relief from itching in the past.
Some authors have suggested that children’s scratching may be related
to social and environmental factors and showed this by asking 30 children
with severe atopic dermatitis and their parents to undertake a series of tasks
together which were either structured or unstructured. They found that the
children were more likely to scratch their skin or ask their parents to scratch
them during play rather than when they have to undertake a task together.
What was extremely important about this particular research was that they
found that scratching and rubbing were most likely to occur when the par-
ents were asking the children to stop scratching or otherwise paying attention
to the child’s scratching behaviour. By paying attention to these behaviours,
parents can reinforce scratching and actually make it worse. Accordingly,
parents should be careful to consciously limit the attention they give to chil-
dren’s scratching behaviour. The authors showed that children’s scratching
and rubbing were less likely to occur when parents were attending to other,
non-scratching behaviours.
So far we have looked at some behavioural and psychological aspects of
trying to improve the child’s skin disease. Since childhood skin disease most com-
monly begins in early childhood, problems with sleep can arise due to itching
and scratching. It is thought that long-term sleep problems further worsen the
skin through psychological stress and it is important to emphasise the impor-
tance of good sleep for both child and parents in managing the stresses of
the day.
It has been shown that children with atopic dermatitis have a greater number
of night wakings than children without dermatitis. Sleep continuity is likely to be
affected by itching and scratching.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stress and emotions

Stress has been shown to be an important contributory factor in conditions such as eczema and psoriasis. The way in which stress affects these conditions is thought to be a complex process which involves changes in the way children perceive their pain and itching, changes in the child’s immune function and changes in inflammatory responses. Research on children with skin diseases has focused on the role of the family environment in the maintenance of the symptoms. Different kinds of stress and family organisational structures have been researched with respect to how they affect the severity of children’s eczema. It has been shown that less severe eczema symptomswereassociatedwithamoreorganisedandindependent familystructure. This research is a good example of the very complex relationship between children’s skin disease and the psychological factors that can affect it. The authors of this research concluded that more organised families were better at protecting their children from stress
Read more

Do You Have Dry Skin?

Image
Why Does Skin Become Dry? The horny layer is water-resistant, but not waterproof. We are constantly losing water through our skin, as water from body cells slowly migrates to the surface and evaporates. On an average, we lose about a pint of water daily this way. (This is in addition to the water we lose through perspiration from sweat glands.) But certain factors can increase the rate at which your skin loses water. If you live in a dry climate, for example, you'll probably experience dry skin because arid air speeds up the evaporation process. Most of us get drier skin during the winter, too, regardless of where we live, because artificially heated air is dry. Another factor is age. As we get older, the horny layer loses some of its ability to hold water in. Not surprisingly, many of my older patients complain of dry skin. Pampering Dry Skin How can you counteract the drying process? Certainly, a mild cleanser and effective moisturizer are important. in a coming post we will tell
Read more

The Sun and Your Skin

Open Your Eyes to the Facts. Though we've all heard the warnings about the dangers of sunbathing and the importance of sunblock, the consequences of sun damage (aside from the temporary sting of sunburn) are initially invisible and are sometimes hard to comprehend. The truth is, as much as 90 percent of wrinkles, brown spots, and sagging skinwhat we usually think of as agingcan be attributed to sun damage, says the American Skin Association, a national organization for education on skin health. What's worse, skin cancer is now the most common cancer, striking more than 800,000 Americans each year, according to the American Cancer Society If you're still tempted to head out the door without sun protection, stop to consider what's going to happen to your skin. Melanin, the protective pigment found in the epidermis, defends the skin against sun damage by absorbing the sun's rays and dissipating the energy as heat. The more sun exposure, the more melanin the skin
Read more

Skin-Care Basics 2

Image
The importance of skin care cannot be underestimated. Did you know, for example, that the skin is the largest organ of the human body? Mostly we take our skin very much for granted and don't spend much time thinking about the skin’s functions and their importance, until some problem occurs or we injure ourselves.The following article provides some insight into why good skin care is important and suggests a simple skin care regime anyone can follow to help your skin perform at its best. In addition, it discusses some lifestyle factors which will improve your skin if followed. It's not rocket science, really it is just common sense. HERE ARE SOME IMPORTANT TIPS FREE FOR YOU 1.Precious drops of olive or almond oil added to your bath water enhances a creamy, shiny and smooth skin. 2.To prepare a rich oil bath, blend together a quarter cup of olive oil, one tablespoon shampoo, one cup vegetable oil and one tablespoon lemon juice. Use one or two tablesp
Read more

Basic Skin Care

Image
No doubt that skin is an indicator to your overall health. If you're not healthy, your complexion will show that clearly . But that doesn't mean you should ignore your skin if you feel fine. Always wear a moisturized sunscreen when outdoors, winter and summer. The sun's rays can burn you even if the air feels cool, and sunlight reflected off water or snow can be particularly powerful. No matter what your skin type is, use a protective sunscreen when you are in the sun; don't expose your skin for more than 15 minutes. Don't forget to use sunscreen on your face and the back of your hands because these are constantly exposed to the sun's rays. Always remove your makeup before going to bed. If you usually wear makeup, give your skin a chance to breathe one day a week by going without. If your face tends to be puffy in the mornings, keep skin freshener, astringent, and cotton pads for your eyelids in the refrigerator for a quick pick-me-up. Rub moisturizing lotion on
Read more

Children’s sleep problems: What can I do?

Many parents may assume that disrupted sleep is inevitable and that there is nothing that can be done about it; but parents must be reassured that sleep disruption is preventable and aworthwhile goal on account of all the consequences of insufficient sleep. Parents themselves need adequate time for sleep and rest at night and so should realise that they need to look after themselves as well as their child as there can be a tendency to concentrate so much on their child’s problems that they don’t adequately take care of themselves. Parents have to realise that when they start to undertake the above changes, there will be a temporary increase in stress as they introduce a more consistent night-time structure. But this will be seen to be worth it as a decrease in stress and an increase in normal sleep start to occur. Compliance Skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis, acne and vitiligo often require treatment and medication to improve the condition. Medical compliance (how well patients
Read more

Help your therapist help you

A common problem that arises when with counselling in medical settings is that your counsellormaymake assumptions about the nature of your condition and the way that it affects you, unless you are able to clearly express your feelings to him or her.In order to know how you understand the problem, the counsellormay ask for information about certain key areas regarding your illness experience. It’s often a good idea to think about this beforehand. For example, you may want to consider what the skin condition is, its course, duration and possible treatments that might be associated with it, Also how the condition affects you psychologically, coping with the condition, its effect on daily activities and on your perception of yourself? It is important to address these issues. Lack of understanding about your concerns by the counsellor can lead to problems in the therapeutic relationship and delay the benefits that you can reap from counselling.
Read more

Counselling and dermatology

Psychological treatment for people affected by a skin disease have ranged from psychoanalysis to the use of hypnosis, and treatmentmethods have been reviewed for anumber of skindiseases suchas acne, psoriasis, eczema and virus-mediated dis- eases.The published literature inthis field suggests that psychological interventions have proved to be effective for many different disorders. Psychological interven- tions, such as suggestion and hypnosis, have been shown to have the capacity to enhance immunity, and behavioural and cognitive interventions have also been used in the treatment of dermatological conditions. Behavioural interventions tend to focus on understanding and improving the ways in which people behave that might impact on their skin condition, whereas cognitive interventions tend to focus on the way people think about their skin condition. Cognitive behavioural therapy uses a mix of these ideas. One of the most effective therapeutic models in helping people cope with skin dise
Read more

Coping

‘Coping’ is an active process,which relies on a range of techniques used at different times. These vary fromseeking social support to venting emotions and confronting risk. In a recent review by Moss and Savin (1995), the coping strategies of people with some form of disfigurement were examined. The authors found that the concept of coping was divided into the broad categories of emotion-focused coping and problem-focused coping. The former dealswith theway people attend to threat. That is, trying to change the way they think about a threat and their perceptionof it, so as to neutralise it or make it less threatening. An example of this is where you might challenge your view of a social situation where you feel that the way you look is being scrutinised. The latter involves doing something about it, such as using practical tools for how to deal with staring and rude comments and how to confront other difficult social situations. This may include making eye contact with the other person,
Read more