Boy bald after pulling out hair

A boy from Iowa who is only 11 has apparently gone bald after pulling out his hair.

The child suffers from trichotillomania, a mental disorder that makes patients compulsively pull out their own hairs.

“He started to pull out his eyebrows when he was in second grade, then he quit. Then, when he started fourth grade, he started to pull out his hair,”his mother told ABC.

It is known that this type of activity may start in childhood due to anxiety or boredom.“Some say it’s pleasurable in a way,”Dr. Marin Franklin from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia told ABC.“It calms them down or gets them interested when they’re bored.”

The boy now tries playing with an eraser instead of pulling out his hair. His mother believed that the disorder happened because her son is highly intelligent and therefore bored at school.

By Kang Yoon-seung (koreacolin@gmail.com)
Intern reporter
Edited by Rob York