Alopecia Areata: Progressing Practice
Transcript: The value of hair
Rodney Sinclair, MBBS, MD, FACD
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One of the other interesting discussion points that also came up with the World Congress of Dermatology is that it's not just women who put a high value on their hair. And so when people have done studies looking at the burden of disease and trying to understand how it impacts people, most people have a greater empathy for people whose hair is really critical to their physical appearance. And we tend to think of the value that women put on their hair, the amount of time, the amount of money they spend in the hairdressers, and we tend to think that they're gonna be the ones who are most greatly impacted by alopecia when they lose their hair. But in fact, it was really interesting to look back at some of the earlier literature. And there was a paper that was actually published by our group in the Medical Journal of Australia back in 2010, where we looked at the suicides amongst patients with alopecia areata.
And the suicides tended to be in young teenage and even younger boys. And what was interesting, what came out of it and this was highlighted in a number of discussions, is that women and young girls who have got long hair, when they get a patch of alopecia areata they can often tie their hair back in a ponytail and they can get about their daily life. They can go back to school, they can go to work with their hair loss concealed. But the young boys, particularly the teenage boys, if they get even a small patch of alopecia areata, that's immediately obvious to the casual observer. It triggers questions that may be unwelcome by the person who's feeling self-conscious about their alopecia, and it triggers teasing and bullying. And what we saw in the young boys was that there was a lot of school avoidance that led to social isolation, and in a number of very unfortunate but fortunately rare cases, it actually led to suicide. And so I think it's really important not to underestimate the impact that alopecia has on boys, on men, the impact that loss of eyebrows and eyelashes had, 'cause people often find that personally, very disfiguring.
Even though many men will shave their head because of androgenic alopecia, they can rock the look with the bald scalp, they often find they can't rock the look with no eyebrows, no eyelashes. They feel disfigured, they feel as though their physical appearance has been negatively affected and it just shatters their self-confidence. And so I think having an understanding, having an understanding about hairstyling, cosmetic camouflage, things that you can do, advice that you can give to get these young boys, young men back to school, back into their life, get 'em through the day with their hair loss while we're waiting for their hair to regrow is really important. And it's not just women, not just teenage girls who are impacted profoundly by their hair loss.
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