Instructor: James Greenblatt, MD
Hair pulling and skin picking are often viewed primarily as behavioral or psychiatric problems, yet for many patients, therapy and conventional medications provide incomplete or temporary relief. Trichotillomania and excoriation disorder are complex body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) associated with abnormalities in impulse control, habit circuitry, neurotransmission, and emotional regulation – and they frequently coexist with anxiety, depression, OCD, ADHD, and other psychiatric conditions.
This presentation introduces a nutritional and functional psychiatry framework for understanding these challenging disorders. Rather than asking only, “How do we stop the behavior?”, clinicians will learn to ask a more fundamental question: “What biological factors may be driving the urge?”
What You’ll Learn
Drawing upon emerging research and decades of clinical experience, Dr. James Greenblatt explores potential contributors including glutamate and dopamine dysregulation, oxidative stress, nutritional insufficiencies, gut dysbiosis, genetics, and metabolic individuality. The program examines conventional treatments, including habit-reversal therapy and pharmacologic approaches, while expanding the clinical toolbox to include targeted nutritional assessment and interventions such as N-acetylcysteine and other biologically informed strategies.
The goal is not to replace behavioral therapy or appropriate medication, but to broaden treatment from symptom management toward individualized biological investigation – and go beyond a “one size fits one” approach that incorporates psychiatric assessment, nutrition, genetics, lifestyle, and targeted laboratory evaluation.
Learning Objectives
- Recognize the clinical features of trichotillomania, excoriation disorder, and related BFRBs and distinguish them from OCD, self-injury, anxiety disorders, and other commonly confused conditions.
- Describe emerging biological mechanisms underlying hair pulling and skin picking, including alterations in habit and inhibitory-control circuitry, glutamatergic and dopaminergic signaling, oxidative stress, genetics, and the gut-brain axis.
- Identify nutritional, metabolic, gastrointestinal, and other biological factors that may contribute to BFRB vulnerability in individual patients.
- Evaluate the evidence for conventional and integrative interventions – including habit-reversal strategies, pharmacologic treatments, N-acetylcysteine, and targeted nutritional approaches.
- Apply a personalized functional psychiatry framework that integrates biological assessment with medication and behavioral therapy to develop individualized treatment plans.
Bring your questions and gain insight into how our functional approaches can help enhance your practice and patient outcomes!
All registrants will receive a link to watch the webinar recording post-event. Please note: Email reminders and replays are undeliverable to general and unmonitored emails (such as support@, info@ or admin@). This webinar recording will be available free for live attendees; attendees will be sent the recording link post-event. This webinar will remain free for the general public for two weeks post-webinar. After that point, the price increases to $19.
James Greenblatt, MD
A trailblazer in the field of functional and integrative psychiatry, James M. Greenblatt, MD, has treated thousands of patients since 1988. With over three decades of clinical experience, he is considered the leading authority on low-dose lithium for mental health, having pioneered its safe, evidence-based use in treating addiction, mood disorders, and cognitive decline. He is the author of ten books, including his newest, Finally Hopeful and The Lithium Revolution, and the bestseller, Finally Focused.
After receiving his medical degree and completing his psychiatry residency, Dr. Greenblatt completed a fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School. For nearly 20 years he served as the Chief Medical Officer at Walden Behavioral Care in Waltham, MA, and currently as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and Dartmouth College Geisel School of Medicine. Dr. Greenblatt lectures internationally on the scientific evidence for functional and nutritional interventions for and mental illness. He is the Founder & Chief Medical Officer of Psychiatry Redefined, the leading continuing education platform for mental health providers.
Let’s redefine mental wellness together.
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