A gap in clinician education
Are adolescent patients likely to self-report this behavior, or is it something that physicians need to suss out for themselves?
Clearly, if child psychologists, psychiatrists, or pediatricians see young people with patches of alopecia – eyebrows or eyelashes missing, head hair with spots – in addition to a dermatologic assessment, they should simply ask, “Do you pull your hair?”
But it’s interesting that with the internet, young people are much more likely to disclose and actually come forward and tell their parents that they think they have trichotillomania.
I also hear from a lot of the adolescents that they have to educate their doctors about trichotillomania because so often physicians don’t know much about it and will assume that it’s self-injury or just a symptom of anxiety. It’s a little bit of a flip from what we might have seen 20 years ago.
I’ve seen several patients who’ve said, basically, “I’m tired of no professionals seeming to know about this. I shouldn’t have to be educating my doctors about this.” I tell them that I completely agree. It’s a shame because if a doctor doesn’t know about it, then how can they get the appropriate care?
What are the complications that accompany trichotillomania?
A small percentage, maybe about 10%, will ingest their hair, much like people who bite and swallow their fingernails. The concern there is that because hair is nondigestible, it could create an intestinal plug that could rupture and be potentially life-threatening. That makes it all the more important to ask those who pull their hair what they do with the hair once they pull it.
However, with most people, the real problem is with self-esteem. Young people may not want to socialize, go on dates, or do other things they would normally do because of it. In adults, you may find that they’re far more educated than their job allows but don’t want to go to an interview because they don’t want to have somebody sit there and look at them and notice that perhaps they don’t have any eyebrows, or that they’re wearing a wig. Those psychosocial implications are huge for so many people.
Treatment options
In a 2021 study, you showed that nearly one-quarter of people with trichotillomania do naturally recover from it. What characteristics do they seem to have?
It’s interesting because we see natural recovery across many mental health problems: alcohol addition, gambling, OCD. The question then becomes why is that some people can seemingly just stop doing a behavior? Can we learn from those people?
We did see that those who naturally recovered were less likely to have some other mental health comorbidities. It seems like when you have other things such as skin picking or OCD plus trichotillomania, that it probably speaks to something that perhaps synergistically is keeping it going. But this is just a first study; learning how to harness and understand it is the next step.
What’s the goal of treating trichotillomania?
The desired goal is zero pulling. The realistic goal is more likely significantly reduced pulling that then leads to greater function in life, greater quality-of-life.
One doesn’t have to go from 100 to 0 in order to do that. I always tell people that maybe every now and then, every few months, when something is going on in life, you might find yourself pulling a hair or two. That’s okay. If you’re not pulling every day and it’s significantly reduced, we’ll call that a success. I think that setting reasonable goals at this point is really important.
And what would the treatment pathway look like for most patients?
The standard approach is probably some type of habit-reversal therapy, of which there have been many variants over the years. It involves doing something different with your hand, identifying the triggers that may set you off, and then doing something in response to those triggers that is not pulling and might neutralize whatever that anxious or stressed feeling is. That could be different with each person.
At this point, there is no drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for trichotillomania. Our best approaches have included N-acetylcysteine, a glutamate modulator, which we’ve done research in.
That’s kind of a go-to option for people because its side-effect profile is generally innocuous. The data show that it could be beneficial in many people with very few, if any, side effects. That would be one “medication,” although it’s actually an over-the-counter vitamin. But we’re constantly looking for better and better treatments.
Do you have any final advice for clinicians or researchers?
Given how common it is, I don’t think clinicians should just see it as an innocuous little habit that people should be able to stop on their own. Clinicians should educate themselves about trichotillomania and know where the person should get the appropriate care.
From the research perspective, given the fact that we see this in animals of multiple species – that they overgroom – this seems to be deeply ingrained in us as animals. So when it comes to the underlying neuroscience, people should pay more attention because it probably has a lot to do with our understanding of habit and compulsive behaviors. It arguably can cut across a lot of different behaviors.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.