Losing hair is a common issue that some 50 percent of males in the UK experience at some point in their lives. That being said, there are in fact many different types of hair loss and not all men experience the same type or experience it at the same rate.
Some of the forms of hair loss include none scarring alopecia, diffuse / focal alopecia, and scarring alopecia. Although it mainly occurs on the head and scalp, hair loss can in fact happen on any part of the body.
Losing a large amount of hair from the top of your head has both cultural and societal importance. In addition to this, the loss of hair from the head and other parts of the body has the potential to lead to psychological distress.
Limited Research
The actual research into the direct psychological issues that are caused by hair loss is actually quite limited. However, based on the evidence that there is, it is clear to see that losing your hair has a psychologically damaging effect that causes serious emotional distress to the individual.
In certain circumstances, it can lead to relationship, work, social, and personal problems. Those people who experience a large amount of hair loss on their head have a greater likelihood of also experiencing distress psychologically than those men who only experience a mild level of hair loss.
This is because losing one’s hair, including the eyebrows and eyelashes, can seriously impact on the look of a man’s face. The resulting look may be seen by some as a failure of conforming to certain norms within society that relate to physical appearance
Losing your hair can over time lead to stress, distress, anxiety, and even depression for some people. Experiencing stress can also have an impact on the rate at which someone loses their hair. For instance, those women who work in stressful environments are almost as much as 11 times more prone to hair loss than those women who do not work in a stressful environment.
When compared with the reset of the population, those people who lose their hair have a greater chance of suffering from certain psychiatric disorders, including social phobia, anxiety, paranoia, and depression.
Treating Depression And Anxiety
Where depression and anxiety are caused by hair loss, the treatment for them is support groups and cognitive therapy, in addition to medication. However, none of these things will work whilst ever the hair loss persists.
In the more extreme cases, some men opt to go down the root of having a surgical operation known as a hair transplant. These can help to fully restore hair across the entirety of the head, thus helping to improve a man’s mental state by giving him the confidence of old, when he had a full head of hair.
