Trichotillomania is a mental health condition that usually begins in childhood. If you start to see signs that your child is pulling their hair out or experiencing unexplained hair loss, it's a good idea to seek advice from a doctor as soon as possible. Treatment is much more effective when started early.
Some doctors suggest tricks that make hair pulling more difficult, like wearing band-aids around their fingers. Kids who play with their hair after pulling it can also try carrying around other small objects to play with instead, like paperclips or erasers.
It's very possible that your toddler has trichotillomania (trich, for short, and at this age called "baby trich"), a disorder whose symptom is the pulling out of your own hair. In young children, hair pulling will often come and go. In some kids, it disappears altogether, and in others it comes back over time.
Trichotillomania is an independent diagnosis but is highly comorbid, meaning it frequently occurs with other conditions. Anxiety and depression are the most common comorbidities, followed by ADHD.
Trichotillomania can be either a simple habit, an angry protest or a sign that your child is anxious or under stress. If your child has only started pulling his hair out at school age, there may have been other causes for the problem.
Trichotillomania. This condition is an impulse control disorder caused by anxiety or stress. Often called “hair-pulling disorder,” people with trichotillomania have the irresistible urge to pull out their own hair, eyelashes or eyebrows. The area of hair loss is usually asymmetric and follows an irregular pattern.
While people on the autistic spectrum often have comorbid trichotillomania and other BFRBs, the reverse correlation does not appear to hold true, and no scientific evidence could be found indicating that autism causes trichotillomania.
Trichotillomania has also been linked to impulsive behavior and sensation seeking, which are both often present in substance use disorders. Trichotillomania itself has been considered a form of addiction, as those with trichotillomania may experience withdrawal or difficulty stopping hair-pulling behaviors.
For some people, hair pulling can be a type of addiction. The more they pull their hair out, the more they want to keep doing it.
It's very possible that your child has trichotillomania (trich, for short), a disorder whose symptom is the pulling out of your own hair. In young children, hair pulling will often come and go.
The typical age of onset for trichotillomania in children tends to coincide with the onset of puberty. Since the internal hormonal changes can be difficult to detect, a child could start puberty as early as 8 years old, which is why the typical age of onset for trich tends to be between ages 9 and 13.
Vitamin D deficiency has been correlated with non-scarring alopecia including alopecia areata or female pattern hair loss. It was theorized that hair loss secondary to vitamin D deficiency in patients susceptible to trichotillomania may exacerbate this obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Trichotillomania (often abbreviated as TTM) is a mental health disorder where a person compulsively pulls out or breaks their own hair. This condition falls under the classification of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Trichotillomania is on the obsessive-compulsive spectrum, which means that it shares many symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), such as compulsive counting, checking, or washing.
Recently, a strong relationship of family chaos during childhood and trichotillomania has also been reported, in which 86% of women with trichotillomania reported a history of violence—for example, sexual assault or rape—concurrent with the onset of trichotillomania.
Bipolar disorder falls under the category of mood disorders while trichotillomania falls under the category of Obsessive Compulsive and Related disorders.
Trichotillomania has been found to be associated with mood disorders, particularly bipolar disorder. Trichotillomania has shared similarities with bipolar disorder by virtue of phenomenology, co-morbidity, and psychopharmacologic observations.
Research has indicated a connection between trauma and Trichotillomania. Eighty-five adults with Trichotillomania provided self-report data. Those with self-reported traumatic events had greater global hair pulling severity. Trauma correlated with depression, experiential avoidance, and quality of life.
Response to trauma
Although the cause of this compulsive disorder is largely unknown, it appears that trichotillomania can be triggered by an initial trauma, thus indicating that this particular disorder is 'response' behaviour, rather than a stand-alone illness.
It seems trichotillomania has a strong genetic component after a study confirmed a certain gene mutation predicted the disorder in families. Trichotillomania, the mental health condition that involves people pulling out hairs from various locations on the body, can add significant distress to a person's life.
Trichotillomania impacts adults and children. The condition is more common in children ages 9–13 years than other age brackets. Older adolescents and teens with trichotillomania often experience increasingly severe symptoms the longer the condition is present.
If untreated, trichotillomania is a chronic illness that often results in substantial psychosocial dysfunction, and that can, in rare cases, lead to life-threatening medical problems.