Melainomania: a study on 100 subjects

The melainomania is a psychological and skin syndrome and it expresses the obsessive need of tanned skin in a complete and constant way. We searched for the psycho-patogenetic factors of the syndrome and the psychological and skin ends point useful to evaluate the psychic and skin damages.

Seventy-two women and 28 men, aged 38-56 years, who were used to a constant photo exposure have been examined. We have considered the psychosocial damages by Rorschach e Machover tests and by psychologist-subject interviews, skin damages by Glogau signs and by echography. Furthermore, the subjects have been submitted to a psychotherapeutic treatment.

The tests and the interviews have underlined obsessive lines, dependence, bodily misperception, low index of reality. The Spearman correlations among clinical signs and echographic findings shows high significance. The psychotherapy has reduced the uneasiness in 66 women and 24 men. Each event that produces uneasiness requires a rationalization process that individualizes in successive phases logical justifications for the lived uneasiness and for the perceived consequences. The rational psycho mechanics is a new method that has identified the phase of the thought-deviation and it has planned the corrective therapy.

The psychological tests, the interviews, the clinical signs and the ultrasound have allowed us to appraise the psychic and skin damages, while the method of the rational psycho mechanics seems to have brought a satisfactory therapeutic result.