About Trichotillomania Trichotillomania, also known as trich or ttm is characterized by hair pulling practices. This condition is not as rare as one may think, in fact, 1 in 50 people suffer from this disease. If you have the habiy of pulling your hair out, you most likely have trich. The Trichotillomania Learning Center is a great organization which has tons of information regarding this condition, make sure you contact them to find out more. In order for a person to be diagnosed with Trichotillomania, he or she should have all the following characteristics: they should feel a sense of gratification, pleasure or relief as they pull their hair, if the person tries to resist pulling his or her hair, he or she should feel a certain amount of tension that builds up as much as the resistance continues, the person should pull his or her hair recurrently until hair loss is evident, not have other mental conditions that could be responsible for this behavior and the condition should cause distress in important areas of the person's life such as social and occupational. There are many cases in which patients do not report any tension before pulling their hair, and show no gratification feelings while they do it or after they do ti. Based on this fact, some experts believe that these two elements should be seen as possible but not mandatory. So far, a person should experience all the 5 factors mentioned above in order to be diagnosed with Trichotillomania. This condition has some factors that usually accompany it, such as the development of phobias, chronic worrying or Generalized Anxiety Disorder, the development of Major Depression, abuse of alcohol and other substances and OCD. The impact in the person's life will interfere with performance in school and work, sometimes meaning missing classes or calling in sick for work. Patients have expressed that one of the areas that they see more problems with is intimate relationships, more than 56% of trich patients are either divorced or single. This numbers can also be related to patients reporting low self esteem in up to 85% of the cases, a reduced sense of attractiveness, shame, anxiety and depression problems. On a more positive side, trich can be treated effectively with psychotherapy. In fact, once the patient has been educated to fully understand that having trich is not his or her fault, ans once the family is aware of the fact that nobody is to be blamed for it, treatment becomes a lot easier. Group therapy is highly suggested and the creation of support groups has proven too work well. Now lets review what treatment would generally look like. The first step after educating the patient and the patient's family, is the focus on applied behavior analysis. This analysis includes the details related to pulling the hair, such as where you do it, when you do it, whether or not there are internal and external causes, etc. By studying these factors the psychotherapist will find out if positive or negative reinforcement is taking place. If the hair pulling happens as a result of stress, anxiety or tension, for example, it is said to be negative reinforcement, if it happens because the patient gets a certain degree of satisfaction by pulling his or her hair, it is called positive reinforcement. After data has been collected, the next stage is called stimulus control, which means that once the factors that trigger hair pulling have been identified, it will be easier to reduce the exposure to those factors as much as possible. The therapist will now be ready to start reversing habits. Furthermore, the therapist may use cognitive strategies to help the patient overcome these issues. If therapy is not going as well as planned or if you simply would like to complement your therapy with medications, a psychiatrist must be visited in order to get the medication that will work better for your particular case of trich. The most commonly used medications include Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI’s), Citalopram (Celexa), Clomipramine (Anafranil), Paxil (Paroxetine), Lithium, Atypical Neuroleptics, Fluoxatine (Prozac), Naltrexone, Risperidone, Zoloft (Sertraline), Fluvoxamine (Luvox), Topiramate (Topamax) and Olanzapine.

Alternative treatments include hypnosis as a valuable complement to other treatments mentioned before. Due to the many myths about hypnosis that are out there we will include the most common ones which are all false. Loss of control, amnesia, and doing things people wouldn’t do otherwise are part of those myths. In fact what hypnosis does is to give patients the opportunity to focus a lot better, time will fly, and you will be more relaxed.