AccScience Publishing / JCBP / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/JCBP026130015
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Short-term art therapy process in a patient with comorbid major depressive disorder and skin-picking disorder

Fatma Tezcan Karadeniz1* Rabia Karanfil2 Nurhan Eren1
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1 Department of Mental Health and Diseases, Istanbul Faculty of Medicine, Istanbul University, Social Psychiatry Service, Çapa, Istanbul, Turkey
2 Human and Art Academy, Halkalı, Istanbul, Turkey
Received: 27 March 2026 | Revised: 5 August 2026 | Accepted: 11 August 2026 | Published online: 26 August 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Excoriation (skin-picking) disorder is a body-focused repetitive behaviour frequently associated with depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive and related disorders. Although art therapy is used as a complementary approach in mental health care, reports describing its therapeutic process in patients with comorbid major depressive disorder and excoriation disorder remain limited. This case report describes the therapeutic process of a 47-year-old woman with major depressive disorder and excoriation disorder who attended nine art therapy sessions. Weekly 90-min sessions included introduction, warm-up, art-making, sharing, and closure phases. Before and after each session, the patient completed the Emotion Identification Form, a routine clinical reflection tool used to document subjective emotional experiences. The patient’s artworks, narratives, form responses, and clinical observations were considered together. The patient’s artworks and narratives reflected family conflict, loss, self-worth, fear, hope, and identity. Visual expression facilitated discussion of experiences that were difficult to verbalize. Across the sessions, the patient demonstrated greater emotional awareness, self-expression, recognition of personal needs, and therapeutic engagement. Observable changes in skin-picking behaviour were limited, and behavioural change was not assessed using a standardized measure. This case suggests that brief art therapy may support emotional expression, self-reflection, and therapeutic engagement in individuals with complex psychiatric comorbidity. Further studies using larger samples, standardized outcome measures, and longer follow-up periods are needed. 

Keywords
Art Therapy
Major Depressive Disorder
Excoriation (Skin-Picking) Disorder
Visual Expression
Funding
The authors declare that no financial support was received for this work.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
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Journal of Clinical and Basic Psychosomatics, Electronic ISSN: 2972-4414 Print ISSN: 3060-8562, Published by AccScience Publishing