Nailing a Habit

The average physician sees plenty of onychophagy in his practice, but never bothers to do anything about it. After all, it is only nail-biting, and it is not the reason for the patient's visit. Also, it gets little attention in medical texts. When Dr. James M. Hesser, of Benson, out in the yucca-and-mesquite mesas of Arizona, wanted to know more about the cause & cure of nail-biting, he asked the A.M.A. Journal to fill him in. Last week the Journal replied:

"It is an automatic, unconscious and frequently impulsive act . . . an expression of tenseness, usually found in fidgety, high-strung, overactive children . . . The origin of nail-biting is probably in the instinct of the child to put every object in the mouth."

Treatment should be aimed at finding the causes of the child's tension, the Journal went on, and even if the root causes are hard to find, a lot of good can be done by building up the child's self-confidence and security: "Nagging or punishing a nail-biter never stops him for longer than half a minute, because he seldom realizes he is doing it. It often increases his tension. Is he being urged or corrected or warned or scolded too much? . . . If movies, television or radio adventures make him more jittery than the average child, he should be kept away from the worst programs."

Finally: "Restraints or bitter drugs applied to the nails do little good. Some children grow to enjoy the taste of drugs; others turn to biting other parts of the fingers."

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