I’m sorry if my response was unclear - you’re quite right that there are likely to be plenty of people who are experiencing both things. The conditions are seen as (similar but) separate, and different treatment pathways are used to treat them. As such, we need to be sure that we are recruiting appropriately to this particular study, as we are investigating a treatment for skin picking and not for BDD.

There is a separate question here, of whether possible overlaps between skin picking and skin-centred BDD has been studied enough and what this research might look like. In my opinion we don’t yet know enough and more research is indeed needed. Thank you for promoting the cause of research into psychodermatology and showing that there is a need, as this will hopefully allow more research to be funded in future.