Trichotillomania is a form of mental disorder and manifests itself in an obsessive urge to pull out their hair. Sometimes it is combined with eating hair. It develops after stressful situations, but more often it affects children and women.
What is trichotillomania?
Trichotillomania is a manifestation of the neurosis of compulsive states. Children may develop between the ages of two and six. If the disease develops in women of mature age, then it is difficult, difficult to treat. Typically, patients wind the hair on the finger and pull them from the scalp, eyebrows or eyelashes. Less commonly use tweezers or pins and are exposed to the hair of the pubic, arms, legs, or axillae.
With the help of pulling out of hair such patients are distracted from disturbing thoughts and receive a peculiar feeling of satisfaction or relaxation. Trichotillomania is often found in patients whose close relatives also suffered from such a disorder, from which it can be concluded that there is a hereditary predisposition to this ailment, which is often combined with the habit of gnawing the nails .
Trichotillomania - psychological causes
The sudden trichotillomania, the causes of which have not yet been thoroughly studied, can develop with such provoking factors:
- Stressful situations - loss of loved ones, divorces, fear, scandals in the family.
- Neuroses, depressive states, schizophrenia.
- Emotional lability and instability of the psyche.
- Traumas of the brain and skull, concussions of the brain.
- Mental traumas in children.
- Hormonal disorders.
- Allergy to medicines.
- Anemia is iron deficient, lack of copper in the body.
- The neurosis of obsessive situations.
- Alcoholism and drug addiction.
- Bulimia.
Trichotillomania - symptoms
Trichotillomania is a mental illness characterized by certain symptoms. The habit of tearing hair on the head is unconscious, patients do not notice it and deny their actions. This can happen during the hobby of something or against a background of a stressful reaction. For conscious pulling out of hair, patients come up with rituals and spend it in secret from others. In order to hide the foci of torn hair, they are masked with wigs, false eyelashes. With large areas of alopecia, such people are forced to abandon all social contacts.
How to get rid of trichotillomania?
In order to understand how to deal with trichotillomania, it is necessary first that the patient recognize her and be ready to get rid of it. In children, treatment is carried out in the form of a game in which the child can tell about his fears. For more complex situations, hypnosis can be prescribed. A psychiatrist doctor tells a person that pulling out the hair will be very painful. The method of behavioral psychotherapy is also applied. The patient is taught how to stop tearing the hair off his head. To do this, when you have such a desire, you need, for example, to squeeze your fingers into a fist.
Medicamentous treatment without psychotherapeutic sessions is ineffective. It is aimed at increasing blood serotonin or other endorphins - pleasure hormones. For this, drugs such as fluoxetine, anafranil and other antidepressants, complexes of vitamin preparations are used. In addition, in the presence of foci of alopecia, hair growth stimulants such as minoxidil should be prescribed.
Trichotillomania - treatment at home
Often, patients are interested in how to cure trichotillomania at home. For this, doctors recommend wearing a special gelatin cap during sleep, use a device for fingers from trichotillomania. We recommend the traditional medicine in the form of a crushed garlic head, filled with a glass of vegetable oil. To this mixture you need to add juice from the lemon. Take this composition with teaspoons (three times a day), you can mix it with cognac for adults. The course of treatment lasts no less than three months.
In addition, it is recommended to go in for sports, yoga or swimming. Long walks for one and a half hours or more help a lot. At night it is recommended to brew herbs with soothing and mood-raising action - motherwort, melissa, St. John's wort, valerian. Well-proven reception of crushed lemon with peel and twelve seeds of apricots. The mixture is filled with honey and taken on an empty stomach by a dessert spoon.
Trichotillomania - consequences
Hair tearing on the head is a disease that leads to social isolation, as patients are ashamed to go out, visit medical institutions, work in teams. This aggravates the mental state and causes apathy, anorexia, depression. When eyelashes are pulled out, the eyelids and mucous membranes of the eyes can be injured with the development of conjunctivitis and blepharitis. If patients are prone to eating hair, then it causes dental and intestinal diseases. Hair rarely leaves on its own and often requires surgical treatment.