A case of clozapine-induced skin picking behaviour
Balaswamy Reddy1, Soumitra Das1, Srinivas Guruprasad2
1Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.
Abstract:
There is some evidence consistently linking the occurrence of de novo obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) with clozapine. This skin-picking disorder is also known as impulsive-compulsive disorder-unspecified which with an increasing convergence with OCD has been placed in the current Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders-fifth edition by American Psychiatric Association (DSM-5), in the category of the obsessive-compulsive and related disorders. To the best of our knowledge, there is no literature relating antipsychotics like clozapine with the occurrence of skin-picking behaviour. In this article, we present a case in whom skin-picking behaviour emerged during the upward dose titration of clozapine and was successfully treated with escitalopram.
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