Trichotillomania: a clinical study of 36 patients

To understand the clinical characteristics of trichotillomania, 36 patients were investigated at the psychocutaneous special clinic from February 1982 to October 1990. There were 16 males and 20 females. The most prominent age was found in a group of 23 (63.9%) elementary school children, and in regards to the age of disease onset, 35 (97.2%) of our patients were under the age of 18. A 30-year-old woman with schizophrenia and a 6-year-old boy with mental retardation were noted in our study; the remaining 34 patients were generally well without signs of mental illness except for the recurrent failure to resist impulses to pull out their own hair. The common life events precipitating stress were academic problems and parent-child conflicts. The duration of follow-up was for at least 6 months. The habit of hair plucking was easily corrected if the duration of the disease was less than 6 months. Usually these patients had a satisfactory regrowth of hair within 1-3 months after our explanation and reassurance. In contrast, the patients with a hair loss of more than half a year were not easy to approach, and needed psychiatric treatment.