Anyone familiar with the obsessive compulsive disorder of pulling hair?

Just recently I've had to deal with several children in the school setting with this disorder. Could you shed some light on this disorder for me?

This disorder is formally names Trichotillamania and is an anxiety disorder characterized by the persistent and excessive pulling of one's own hair, resulting in noticeable hair loss.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) classifies trichotillomania as an impulse-control disorder. The hair-pulling behavior can occur during both relaxed and stressful times, but people with trichotillomania often experience a mounting sense of tension before hair pulling occurs or when attempting to resist the behavior. In addition, as noted in the DSM-IV, a "gratification" or "sense of relief" occurs after the hair is pulled. Therefore, at times, trichotillomania may be described better as a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) due to its compulsivelike nature.

Treatment can include the following:

Habit reversal - This is a set of procedures taught to a child, which include the following components: increasing the child's awareness of the habit; teaching the child a competing response to practice when they feel the urge to engage in the habit, in situations where the habit historically occurs or for 1 minute following the occurrence of the habit; practicing stress/anxiety reduction procedures on a daily basis; and support and encouragement from parents.

Relaxation training - Relaxation training involves helping children to identify their own bodily sensations associated with tension and then to use procedures designed to induce relaxation. Typically this approach is individualized and may include such procedures as deep-breathing strategies and systematic muscle tensing and relaxation.

Psychotherapy - Psychotherapy is a process that involves direct communication between a therapist and a child, mainly in the form of talking, using various techniques to help solve behavioral and other psychological problems. One of the most popular forms of psychotherapy is cognitive behavioral therapy.

Refer to your doctor as he/she will be able to direct you how to go about dealing with it.

I am a qualified social worker with a specialist interest in mental health issues of children and adolescents. Report It

In children hair pulling is usually considered to be a marker of stress, rather than a true obsessive compulsive disorder. I've seen children pull hair from the head, eyebrows or eyelashes. If you can determine the cause of the stress and eliminate it, it usually stops the hair pulling. I've not seen it in a group of children, though, only individual children. I think if I saw it in a group, I'd be looking beyond a behavior problem and into the group dynamic to see what else was going on. If you mean you are seeing individual children, not part of a group doing it, then I would definitely look at the things going on in their lives, at least at school, to see what was putting them under pressure. It could be the work load is too heavy, they are being pressured to suceed beyond their capability, or are failing at something. They may also be being ostracisized for being different somehow, and too young to express the frustrations verbally. There are many underlying causes, but the basic thing is that it's a stress reliever and until you remove the stressor, the behavior won't change.

you should watch mtv's show true life or something like that and they show this one girl who almost went balled by doing that.

It's called trichotilomania. It is generally considered a form of an anxiety disorder, but is sometimes classified as an impulse control disorder. When viewed as an impulse control disorder, it gets lumped in with kleptomania and pyromania and nymphomania. The difference with hair pulling is that it does not harm or cause distress for others. Most children do not pull their hair in public. They pull hair in order to relieve feelings of stress or anxiety. There are some thoughts that pulling the hair causes pain and the body responds to pain by releasing natural pain killers which results in stress relief in a way that is similar to taking prescription pain killers. In this way, hair pulling can become an addictive behavior. Good treatment focuses on reducing anxiety provoking situations and/or teaching the child more appropriate strategies for managing stress and anxiety.