Psychology and psychiatry in the dermatologist's office: an approach to delusions of parasitosis.

Most dermatologists will treat at least one patient suffering from delusions of parasitosis (DP) in their career.1 These patients are memorable not only for the peculiarity of their delusions and their repeated visits to the office, but for the challenges they present in their treatment. These patients are also frustrating. It seems that if they could only stop scratching, picking and manipulating their skin their symptoms would improve. However, these cutaneous signs only hint at the underlying psychiatric problem that drives these patients to manipulate their skin. These patients seek out the assistance of dermatologists and eschew the help of psychiatrists or therapists because they believe that they have a primary skin disease. Although the treatment of DP is conceptually simple, it is not intuitive. Thus as dermatologists, we should have at the ready a full set of dermatologic, psychologic, and pharmacologic tools to treat these patients.