TRICHOTILLOMANIA: CAUSES AND TREATMENT
By Wasim Kakroo
PATHOLOGICAL hair pulling, also referred to as Trichotillomania, is a widespread but underdiagnosed psychological situation. Trichotillomania is a situation by which folks really feel compelled to pluck their hair out.
Many individuals with trichotillomania are unaware that they’ve a diagnosable psychological well being situation. They simply consider their hair pulling as a nasty behavior. Others could endure from extreme bodily and psychological signs associated to it.
On this article, I can be discussing the signs and causes of trichotillomania, in addition to the assorted therapy strategies accessible.
What’s Trichotillomania?
Individuals who endure from trichotillomania have an awesome need to drag their hair out. Many individuals take out their scalp hair generally. Folks with trichotillomania, nevertheless, could pull hair from the assorted different elements of their physique corresponding to beards, eyelashes, or eyebrows.
Some individuals who endure from trichotillomania eat the hair that they pluck from numerous elements of their physique. It has the potential to trigger severe gastrointestinal points.
Trichotillomania develops in most individuals throughout their adolescence. A few of them could then battle with the dysfunction all through maturity, both repeatedly or sometimes.
When hair pulling is coupled with melancholy, it will probably impair social and occupational functioning. Once you’re caught in a hair-pulling bind, it’s possible you’ll really feel helpless. Nonetheless, it’s a dysfunction that may be efficiently addressed.
What are the signs of trichotillomania?
The assorted signs embody:
- repetitive hair pulling with out being conscious
- a sensation of aid after pulling out hair
- incapability to cease hair pulling, regardless of repeated makes an attempt to cease
- anxiousness and rigidity related to hair pulling
- a must undertake extra repetitive actions associated to the hair (e.g., counting or twisting hairs)
- trichopagia or consuming of the plucked hair
- pores and skin discomfort or tingling at bothered places
- apparent hair loss or bald patches at affected areas.
Trichotillomania might be linked to quite a lot of psychological well being points, together with:
Nervousness
Despair
OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Dysfunction)
ADHD (Consideration Deficit Hyperactivity Dysfunction)
Autism
What are the assorted threat components and causes?
Docs are uncertain what causes trichotillomania to develop.
Some folks declare that pulling their hair relieves boredom or rigidity whereas others could pull their hair to deal with unfavorable emotions.
Sure variables can enhance an individual’s threat of getting trichotillomania. These threat components embody:
Genetic contribution: An individual who has a first-degree relative (father or mother or sibling) with the situation is extra prone to develop it themselves.
Childhood trauma: An individual who has undergone childhood trauma is extra liable to develop trichotillomania. Researchers have seen parallels with the triggers for obsessive-compulsive dysfunction and consider that chaotic, traumatic childhood occasions or strained early connections with mother and father or caregivers could also be guilty for the situation’s emergence.
Based on one research, greater than two-thirds of victims of Trichotillomania had been via not less than one traumatic occasion of their lives, with a fifth of them being identified with post-traumatic stress dysfunction (PTSD). This has led to hypothesis that it’s a kind of self-soothing or a coping mechanism for some people.
Modifications in neurophysiology or neurochemistry:
Modifications in mind perform or chemistry that might result in trichotillomania are additionally being investigated by researchers. Such modifications could have an effect on the impulse management potential of their mind and therefore trigger hair pulling dysfunction.
What are the assorted remedies accessible for Trichotillomania?
Many individuals affected by trichotillomania don’t search therapy. Some folks is probably not conscious that they’ve a diagnosable psychological well being situation and consider hair pulling as a nasty behavior. Others, for numerous causes, could also be hesitant to hunt a analysis or therapy.
Therapy of Trichotillomania is decided by the severity of the signs. Often, a psychological well being skilled will counsel the next:
Pharmacotherapy (Medicines):
The assorted medicines that will assist embody:
SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) that are a sort of antidepressant
clomipramine, a tricyclic antidepressant,
naltrexone, an opioid antagonist
olanzapine, an antipsychotic.
Behavioral Remedy
Based on some research, Behavior Reversal Remedy (HRT), is the very best kind of behavioural remedy for treating trichotillomania (HRT). It’s divided into 5 phases:
- Consciousness coaching: The particular person learns to recognise the psychological and environmental components that may result in a hair-pulling episode.
Take into account what sorts of conditions make you need to pull your hair out. Is that one thing you solely do if you’re depressed? Indignant? Confused? Annoyed? Understanding what makes you need to pull your hair out may also help you develop different, extra constructive coping methods. Carrying ziplock luggage and placing pulled hair in these luggage can even allow you to measure your progress and comprehend how a lot hair you are pulling out. Write down each time you pull your hair over the course of two weeks. Hold monitor of what occurred quickly earlier than the hair-pulling, in addition to your feelings earlier than and after you pulled your hair. Be aware of the time of day in addition to the actions.
- Competing response coaching: The particular person practises substituting an alternate behaviour for hair pulling. One methodology that will assist the sufferer give up pulling their hair is the “Discover, Interrupt, and Select Plan.” This entails recognising once they’re tempted to take their hair out and interrupting the chain of feelings and the temptation to drag hair out by listening to nice reminders of their head. Then they’ve the choice of doing one thing else, one thing that can chill out and soothe them.
They’ll make a listing of alternate behaviours that they’ll carry out as a substitute of hair pulling as soon as they’ve found the warning indicators and triggers. No matter various conduct is chosen, it must be easy to hold out and to acquire. Listed here are some concepts for alternate behaviors to specific feelings and emotions:
Scribbling or drawing on paper
Portray
Listening to music that expresses the emotions is a good way to unwind.
Making a telephone name to a buddy
Cleansing
Taking part in pc video games
Stretching and so forth.
If sufferer unintentionally pulling your hair, they could want a bodily reminder to get them to cease. They might contemplate carrying ankle weights or a rubber glove on the arm that pulls as a bodily barrier to inhibit hair pulling.
They might use a cooling or numbing hair product as a “competing response.” There isn’t a fast treatment for trichotillomania, however one can reduce their hair pulling behaviour with coaching, endurance, and practise.
- Motivation and compliance: The person engages in actions and behaviours that remind them of the necessity of adhering to the HRT routine. Receiving appreciation from household and buddies for fulfillment gained all through remedy is one instance.
- Rest coaching: It entails using strategies corresponding to meditation and deep respiratory to assist the particular person chill out. These support within the discount of stress and the ensuing hair pulling. Hair plucking is incessantly the results of an unwillingness to sit down and be current with disagreeable emotions or unfavorable feelings. Victims can use mindfulness meditation workout routines to assist themselves settle for these unfavorable or disagreeable feelings as a traditional a part of life. By these workout routines, they can perceive that they are not all the time essential to keep away from. Hair pulling will cut back when the robust need to keep away from discomfort fades.
- Generalization coaching: It entails placing new abilities into practise in quite a lot of contexts in order that the brand new behaviour turns into second nature.
Most psychological well being professionals agree that HRT must be the first-line therapy for trichotillomania.
If you happen to or any of your loved ones members, buddies or acquaintances have Trichotillomania, It is vital to do not forget that you don’t have anything to be ashamed of now that you just perceive all the signs, causes, and coverings. It’s potential to reside a cheerful life, to beat this downside, and procure the required assist. Throughout remedy, it’s possible you’ll study so much about your self and be capable to assist others after understanding a number of the elementary points that produced Trichotillomania. Do not forget that nobody can ever take away your true magnificence, which is a lot greater than your hair.
- The writer is a licensed scientific psychologist (alumni of Govt. Medical School Srinagar). He works at Kashmir Life Line, a free psychological well being counseling service. Writer might be reached at [email protected]
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