Doctors pulled Giant Hairball from Girl’s Stomach

An 11 year-old girl in Mumbai, India was hospitalized with severe abdominal pain and doctors were forced to operate her. What they found inside her stomach was a foot long giant hair-ball. The mass of hair known as Trichobozear is a potentially fatal result of a mental illness called Trichotillomania.

Trichotillomania (TTM) or “trich” as it is commonly known, is an impulse control disorder or a form of self-injury. The sufferer repeatedly feels the urge to pull out scalp hair, eyelashes, facial hair, nose hair, pubic hair, eyebrows or other body hair and then eat it. According to doctors, 2.5 million people in the U.S may have TTM, with a 1 percent prevalence rate.

Dr. Martin Franklin, associate professor of clinical psychology and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, who studies Trichotillomania in children and adolescents said, “It’s fairly uncommon outcome for trichs, but its pretty life threatening if you end up here.” While he notes that most of the patients who have trichotillomania do not eat hair after pulling it out, he said this extreme condition occurs between 30-40 percent of patients.

Trichotillomania often begins during the early teenage years of an individual. It may seem like a habit or an addiction but due to social implications it usually remains unnoticed and unreported. Depression and stress can also trigger trich. Dr. Darin Dougherty, a psychiatrist and co-director of the Trichotillomania Clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital believes that intervention ranging from therapy to medication, 60 to 80 percent of patients can be effectively treated.

While the cases like this little Indian girl are not common among trich patients but if reached to such a severe stage, this illness can be fatal when it results in bowel obstruction. Parents have a huge role to play in this situation. Many a times this illness goes unnoticed in children because the parents either use a warning attitude with them or make them feel ashamed of what they are doing.

What we need to do on our part as parents and friends is to help out people going through this impulse control disorder. Talk to them, make them feel comfortable and makethem not feel ashamed of their illness. Most of all, assure them that this illness is fairly common and treatable.