Girl has eaten all her hair.....

[MystressDeath]

Primary-school girl eats own hair
By Jessie Tao (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-06-13 17:33 Xiao Ping, an eight-year-old girl in Chongqing Municipality, has eaten up all her hair in the past two years, her mother told the Chongqing Evening News on Monday.
Now Xiao Ping is bald, and Mrs. Li is going public, hoping that some one can help her rid her daughter of her strange habit.


http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-06/13/xin_160603131737068205976.jpg



The rest is here: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-06/13/content_616021.htm



What a strange habit! :boggle:






If it's in the wrong place feel free to move it mods :gurn:

[Koala Kim]

Wow! Poor child! Like the article suggested- she should be taken to a doctor or hospital so they can determine why she does this. Perhaps she's lacking something in her diet? Or stress related?

I hope they *do* take her for tests. Soon.

[moonchiald]

This behavior is a version of Trichotillomania. She needs help not shame to make her stop.

[Alley Cat]

Oh that's awful the poor girl to have such a condition at such a young age hope she gets the help she needs. How sad:whyme:

[angelic]

Sounds to me like this little girl may have pica (http://kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/behavior/pica.html)
Hopefully the doctors will be able to help her and her family out.

[moonchiald]

I don't think I have ever read about pica. I wonder if that will end up being in any of my psych. books. *off to do research*

[Shermie Girl]

Sounds to me like this little girl may have pica (http://kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/behavior/pica.html)
Hopefully the doctors will be able to help her and her family out.

That is what I was thinking. The poor little sweetie. I hope that she gets the help she needs.

[Koala Kim]

Sounds to me like this little girl may have pica (http://kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/behavior/pica.html)
Hopefully the doctors will be able to help her and her family out.
That's what I thought as well. But for some reason- I had it stuck in my pea-brain that pica affects pregnant women only. :gurn:

[Koala Kim]

Okay- don't have a clue how I posted *3* times...:gurn:

[Koala Kim]

Eek! Double post! :blush:

[kimberlily]

Poor girl! I had a friend in elementary school who plucked out all her eyelashes. Kids, being cruel creatures, made her ashamed of her eyelash plucking habit, which made it worse. She went away for the summer for therapy and had stopped the plucking, but the teasing started up again because her lashes hadn't grown in completely, so she regressed. Her mom wound up hiring a tutor to homeschool her until her lashes grew in, then put her in a different school.

[Nini]

Hmm, all the strange things we end up doing... We actually had to keep my sister's head next to shaved when she was a kid. She didn't eat her hair, but she'd suck her thumb and pluck her hair out in patches. The doctors didn't really find a reason, but they said it could be due to nerves. She grew out of it though. And was fortunate enough to look good with her hair that short.

Nini

[idealthursday]

The official title is trichotillophasia. When I was working with Autistic kids I saw a girl who had both trichotillophasia and trichotillomania. It is a type of OCD and is treated with a variety of methods but is best treated by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to work on breaking the soothing habit that the girl had formed.

[Barb]

In case anyone was wondering, Pica is a condition whose chief characteristic is eating non-food substances, like chalk, clay, dirt, etc. This is often the result of an underlying nutritional deficiency.

Occasionally, Pica can be caused by mental illness, but this seems the exception, rather than the rule.

Barb (:grinhappy::ooh::boggle::drool::pissed::innocent: :geek:, God, these smilies are just the best!!!)

[angelic]

Occasionally, Pica can be caused by mental illness, but this seems the exception, rather than the rule.


Hmmmm...I'm interested in where you found this information as from the the research I have done, and my psych texts, and the DSM -IV-TR all seem to indicate the exact opposite in regards to children and pica. If you click on the link that I originally provided about pica in my original post, you will see that there are as many as 25-30% of children that suffer from pica...and 20% of them are seen in mental health clinics...Pica is considered a mental disorder within itself if one uses the standard DSM criteria.

Moonchiald: Pica is classified by the DSM as being an early infancy/childhood eating disorder so if you have any texts that cover that subject you might find info about pica.

[idealthursday]

According to the Reber and Reber "Dictionary of Psychology" Pica is defined as "from the name of a genus of birds which includes the voracious magpie, a persistant eating of nonnutrititive substances, e.g. chalk, clay, bits of trash, etc. It offen accompanies mental retardation and in such cases us classified as a Feeding Disorder of Infancy or Early Childhood. Also called allotriophagy"
I am hunting for my Child Psychopathology book which has a more in debth definition including the decisions around the DSM-IV-TR definition.

[angelic]

According to the Reber and Reber "Dictionary of Psychology" Pica is defined as "from the name of a genus of birds which includes the voracious magpie, a persistant eating of nonnutrititive substances, e.g. chalk, clay, bits of trash, etc. It offen accompanies mental retardation and in such cases us classified as a Feeding Disorder of Infancy or Early Childhood. Also called allotriophagy"
I am hunting for my Child Psychopathology book which has a more in debth definition including the decisions around the DSM-IV-TR definition.

Keep in mind that there is some debate whether pica should be considered an eating disorder or whether it should be added to the spectrum of ocd. Pica is NOT indepth in regards to the DSM.

Yes, the name was derived from the magpie because the bird has a fancy for shiny things.

Oh, and by the way, did you mean trichollophagia? If your original source does not pursue pica further as being a genus of the magpie, you may want to pursue another instructor.

[angelic]

I am hunting for my Child Psychopathology book which has a more in debth definition including the decisions around the DSM-IV-TR definition.


If you have any text books on abnormal child psych...check those out too....

[idealthursday]

I did mention trichotillophagia earlier as the correct definition for eating one's hair. I added my bit on Pica simply to add the correct psychological definition. I do know that there is a debate, however on the current revision of the DSM it is classified as an eating disorder. Pica is much more in debth in a child psychopathology book then in a general abnormal psych textbook, and I personally resent the comment you made about my instructor. Whether or not they went in debth about the genus of the magpie doesn't decide if they are good instructors.

[Barb]

Angelic,

I found the definition for Pica by going to Dictionary.com... not the fanciest place to look for a definition, but it seemed like a logical place to start.

If your DSM -IV-TR lists Pica as a disease, or condition, relating to mental health I certainly won't argue with it. I have heard of people who eat dirt and clay because they are lacking minerals in their diet, though.

[glamgurl36]

that problem isnt that uncommon..its where people who have a certain level of stress pull out their hair strand by strand and bite the roots of their hair to hear it pop....she should get help. i feel sorry for her

[mimi]

Hi! I do hope that I don't shock you with this. But I have this condition myself. I never realised it was a condition until I watched "This Morning" one Friday when the presenters had a woman in the studio who had plucked her head bald. She referred to the condition as "trichomania." And she wasn't that distressed about the matter. She was laughing and joking with the presenters and admitted that she had caused permanent damage to her hair. It started when she was a small child and she was in a car being driven by her mother, they were rushing to hospital as her father had been in an accident and she began pulling her hair out in chunks. That's how it started with her. She was trying to break the habit despite not being actually traumatised by it and was going to have a special wig made with a mesh. She explained only her real hair she wanted to pull, it was never anybody else's! And you get immune to the pain.

So what I realised what I am doing is this as well, however it isn't head hair I pull. Nor am I bothered enough to try and get help for it. I laugh to my husband about it all the time, he tells me that I "should" be worried about it.

Not all "trichomanias" eat their hair though.

I am sorry if it is ruining this child's life though and hope there is help for her.

Well this is very frank for my first post here and I hope I haven't shocked anyone! :ooh:

[AnimaSola3o4]

I've heard of this before actually! Can't be good for the digestive system, huh??

ETA: I should've mentioned that I know about trichotillomania, and know a few people with it.... but actually eating the hair is much more rare, i have only heard of it like once before.

[happylynngilmer]

Yea, I've never heard of pica before, but trichotillomania is a topic thats been discussed on several occasions in my psych classes. Wow, you learn something new everyday!

Poor girl though :{ I hope it didn't mess her up physically, too. Cause tackling mental and physical problems makes it even harder. :{

[royalscorpio]

You are all correct. If you read the article, the doctors state that they feel she is suffering from allotriophagy. Which is another word for Pica. So then, trichophagia is a specific subsection of Pica.

People with pica frequently crave and consume nonfood items such as:

dirt
clay
paint chips
plaster
chalk
cornstarch
laundry starch
baking soda
coffee grounds
cigarette ashes
burnt match heads
cigarette butts
feces
ice
glue
hair
buttons
paper
sand
toothpaste
soapEach of these has an individual name to futher define it. Such as, So and So suffers from depression. What type? SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder. So, we can both say someone has depression or we can say they have SAD. We're both right.

Here are some of the names for some of the above listed:


acuphagia: Ingestion of sharp objects.
amylophagia: Eating laundry starch.
bibliophagia: Consumption of books by eating the pages.
cautopyreiophagia: Eating burnt matches, ingesting burnt match heads.
coniophagia: Consumption of dust.
coprophagia: Eating excrement or feces.
emetophagia: Ingesting vomit.
geomelophagia: Abnormal ingestion of raw potatoes.
geophagy: Eating clay, consuming soil, ingesting dirt.
gooberphagia: A pathological consumption of peanuts.
hematophagy: Ingestion of blood.
hyalophagia: Consumption of glass; such as, glass from windows and bottles.
lithophagia: Ingestion of stones.
mucophagy: Consumption of mucus.
pagophagia: Pathological consumption or excessive eating of ice.
plumbophagia: Eating lead.
trichophagia: Eating hair or wool.
urophagia: Drinking urine.
xylophagia: Consumption of wood.BTW - Trichotillomania only has to do with the need to release the stress/mental anguish from the body by a physical release, in this case, pulling hair out of the body. When the hair is pulled from the body, stress is released from the body. No eating involved, thankfully. :)

[Michiru]

It does sound like a form of trich. That was the frist thing I thought when I read this.