100 Changemakers for 100 days of BFRB Awareness
Liz Atkin is an artist and educator. She reimagines her Compulsive Skin Picking and anxiety into drawings, photographs and performances. Liz is a mental health advocate and raises awareness for the disorder around the world. She has exhibited and taught in the UK, Europe, Australia, USA, Singapore and Japan. Her artwork and an archive of her advocacy for skin picking is held by the Wellcome Collection.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, she gave away more than 18,000 free #CompulsiveCharcoal newspaper drawings to commuters on public transport in London, New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Cologne and more.
Liz teaches art in schools, hospitals, hospices, prisons, arts venues and universities. She is an ambassador for The Big Draw, the world’s largest drawing festival, focusing on the role of creativity for health and wellbeing.
Liz received the Unstoppable Spirit Award for Outspoken Advocacy at the TLC Global Conference for Skin Picking and Hair Pulling Disorders in San Francisco in 2018, and was a finalist in the Janey Antoniou Award with Rethink Mental Illness in 2018. Her work has featured on TEDx, BBC News, Woman’s Hour, Vice, Women’s Health USA, Huffington Post, Channel News Asia, Metro, AlJazeera and more.
"My experience of skin picking started from a young age. The illness wasn’t actually diagnosed until my early 30s, by that point I’d been picking for the best part of 25 years and it was only through internet searches that I realised it had a name. I found the behaviour soothing – it would block out tension, anxiety and uncomfortable emotions as through picking, and I’d hit a 'zoned-out' sense of calm. It developed into something I did subconsciously so there were hours where I would be picking my skin without really thinking about it. The disorder became a private vicious cycle that totally dominated my life behind closed doors. My body was littered with wounds and marks beneath my clothes. No one knew about it. I took care to mask and hide the illness and behaviour from those closest to me, wearing clothes that concealed the parts of my body covered in scabs and scars, making excuses and using make-up on my body to mask it. I began to document how, when and where the illness took place and I began to recognise patterns. When I felt the urge to pick I tried to turn it into something else, something creative. Drawing, especially with charcoal, has become one of my greatest tools for recovery."
Support BFRB Changemakers
BFRB Changemakers supports BFRB healing through community. Our mission is 3-fold:
- raise awareness of debilitating conditions of Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs) such as compulsive hair pulling (trichtotillomania), nail biting (onychophagia), and skin picking (dermatillomania),
- increase and improve access to care, and
- advance community recovery.
Through the BFRB Changemakers Training Academy we strive to increase access to care by offering Continuing Education training to new and seasoned mental health treatment professionals.
BFRB Changemakers is a 501c3 non-profit (EIN #93-1544492). Please make a donation to support these efforts!
