engleski

Trichotillomaina in Childhood

Trichotillomania is an impulse disorder where patients pull their hair from the scalp and/or other sites. Although the clinical presentation is characteristic, it can be confused with some other types of alopecia, particularly alopecia areata. This disturbance is most common in children aged betweeen 4 and 10 years, although it is not infrequent in adults either. Trichotillomania is usuallly considered a sign of an underlying emotional disorder and has been categorized as an obsessive-compulsive neurotic reaction. However, it can be a minor neurotic trait as well as a sign of serious psychiatric disorder. During a three-year period, we observed 39 children with trichotillomania (22 girls and 17 boys) aged 2 to 13 years. The lesions were mostly located in regions accessible to child's hands, such as parietal region (n=26), temporal region (n=9), frontal region (n=2), occipital region (n=1), and in one patient we found diffuse loss of hair. Parents of 11 children noticed the child's habit of playing with hair and pulling it, while onychophagia was observed in 2 patients. Five children were previously hospitalized for some other diseases, and 2 were permanently separated from their parents for social reasons. Treatment involved psychiatric consultation, although in most cases a detailed explanation to the parents might have been sufficient to terminate the hair-pullling.

trichotillomania; childhood

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