Psychiatry and Clinical Psychopharmacology

Trichotillomania onset during pregnancy: a case report

Psychiatry and Clinical Psychopharmacology 2014; 24: Supplement S234-S235
Read: 1898 Published: 17 February 2021

Trichotillomania can involve any area in the body; however, the most common areas are the scalp, followed by the eyebrows and eyelashes. The seriousness of the pulling behavior is perceived over time, and the disease exhibits a chronic course. Here we discuss a patient with trichotillomania onset pregnancy case. KD is 19-year-old women, married. The patient was admitted to the juvenile outpatient clinic accompanied by her parents with the complaints of anxiety and pulling out eyebrow that lasted for 2 weeks. She was 7 weeks pregnant, and the complaints of the patient started with nausea 2 weeks prior to admission. The patient suffered from nausea due to pregnancy that began 2 weeks before the current admission, and the patient was admitted to the emergency service three times. The patient then started pulling out eyebrows due to the stress caused by nausea. She felt relief from the pulling behavior. The patient reported that she engaged pulling behavior only to avoid the sense of nausea. She pulled out her eyebrows almost every day intermittently throughout the day. At the first visit, the patient looked older than her real age. Her style of dress was consistent with her socioeconomic status. The self-care was moderate, and eye contact with the interviewer was partially diminished. The patient was conscious and fully oriented. He spontaneous and voluntary attention, concentration, memory and perception were within normal limits. The patient had normal judgment and insight. The şow of thought was slow. The patient was in a depressed mood and she had dysphoric affect. Administered to the patient in the WAIS-R Test detected normal intelligence level. After initial assessment, the patient was diagnosed with trichotillomania according to the diagnostic criteria of DSM-IV. We started the treatment with behavioral therapy. The hair-pulling behavior that began during pregnancy was discussed in the current case report. The current case supports this notion due to the difficulty of controlling the urge for hair pulling and relief from stress with the pulling behavior. Trichotillomania classified to obsessive-compulsive and related disorders in DSM-V. Many studies have suggested menstruation and pregnancy to be associated with the onset and exacerbation of psychiatric symptoms. Although studies on hair-pulling behavior during pregnancy demonstrated that pregnancy might cause an increase in the pulling behavior, no significant correlation was reported between pregnancy and the onset of hair-pulling behavior.The case report, unlike the literature, presents a patient with trichotillomania that started during pregnancy although patient’s past history was not remarkable for such a condition.

EISSN 2475-0581