Medical Program: The Emotional Toll of Psoriatic Skin Lesions

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This is ReachMD, and you’re listening to Beyond Skin Deep: Impacts of Psoriatic Arthritis, sponsored by Lilly.

On this episode, titled The Emotional Toll of Psoriatic Skin Lesions we will hear from Dr. Robin Dore, Clinical Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA in Los Angeles, California. 

Dr. Dore:
As we know, psoriasis patients are frequently depressed, and often this is because people judge them by their appearance; and they will have these scaly skin lesions that people might think are contagious, they can look unattractive, and then there’s also the nail involvement with psoriasis.  And you can sort of cover up your skin by long sleeves and long pants.  Even often my female patients are wearing a headband on their hair to hide any scalp lesions, and most of the men come in wearing a hat.  So you can hide as much as possible, but those lesions that are on the hands or the nail lesions are impossible to hide, and if the stranger meets you, they will often sort of recoil looking to shake their hands with these nails that are affected by psoriasis—especially patients who are involved in dealing with the public.  I have a patient who is an auctioneer who has terrible psoriasis in his nails, and so what he is doing for his occupation is using his hands and pointing to different items, and he said that at times clients have actually not used him anymore because of the appearance of his hands that are so vital to his employment.  So because of people judging what a person looks like, it’s very important to try to get the skin as clear as possible and have the nails improved as well.  For a woman, sometimes that’s very hard to disguise, and some of my female patients, when their disease isn’t under control, will actually wear a hat just like the male patients.  So trying to cover up the psoriasis until the skin disease is under control really takes a lot of time and energy for these patients. 

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