Hair Pulling Disorder
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Trichotillomania, a poorly understood disorder in which a person repeatedly pulls out their own hair, leading to visible hair loss, can have a crippling effect on its sufferers, and treatment is rarely effective, according to a new survey of patients with this condition.
Ref. https://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070118/hl_nm/hair_pulling_dc
From the article:
QUOTE |
The disorder can have a number of consequences for health, he added; sufferers may develop repetitive strain injury, while some who mouth or swallow their hair can damage their teeth and even develop potentially fatal balls of hair in their stomach. People may also feel guilty about not being able to stop pulling their hair, he added. "More so than anything they feel out of control. |
I was reading a message forum and one person wrote:
I haven't heard of this as a nervous type of tick, it must be absolutely awful to watch your child pulling out their eye lashes. I don't know how you would even go about trying to stop this as I am guessing it becomes an essential 'habit' for the child.
My youngest Son pulls his hair out in clumps when he his having one of his 'tempers', and he hurts himself in any way that he can think of, including kicking his legs through a wardrobe to make his feet bleed, he will think nothing of breaking a toy to cut his arms with when he is in the middle of these 'tempers'. It's really frustrating, and I can understand where this parent is coming from having to watch their child go through pulling their eye lashes out, now whether this in their case is more of a comfort thing I don't know, but unless the cycle gets broken, it just continues and becomes an ongoing problem. (In my opinion)
When someone pulls out their hair it is called Trichotillomania. I have known a few people who had this disorder. One of the girls I knew who had this disorder seemed pretty normal. She would wear hats every day and had long hair. I hung out at her place a couple times and never noticed anything too strange. This was until I had to use her bathroom and saw hair ALL OVER THE FLOOR. I was shocked but didn't say anything about it to her. A couple weeks later we were talking about hair and she told me she had a disorder where she pulled her hair out. I already knew the name from watching a program years before, so when I told her the name she was surprised. I've only known females to have this disorder, I wonder if it affects more girls than guys.