Allotrichophagia: A Unique Case of Parental Adjustment to Filial Pediatric Malignancy

A 36-year-old Hispanic female patient with gastrointestinal symptoms and weight loss was found to have a trichobezoar in her stomach requiring a surgical removal. Psychiatry team was consulted due to concerns for depression and trichotillomania. The psychiatric evaluation revealed that the patient w...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Case reports in psychiatry 2022-06, Vol.2022, p.1-5
Main Authors: Huremović, Damir, Nagalla, Madhavi Latha, Khan, Sameer
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anemia
Anxiety
Cancer
Care and treatment
Case Report
Case reports
Chemotherapy
Daughters
Depression, Mental
Drug abuse
Hispanic people
Lymphoma
Neuroses
Obsessive compulsive disorder
Pediatrics
Suicides & suicide attempts
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:A 36-year-old Hispanic female patient with gastrointestinal symptoms and weight loss was found to have a trichobezoar in her stomach requiring a surgical removal. Psychiatry team was consulted due to concerns for depression and trichotillomania. The psychiatric evaluation revealed that the patient was not ingesting her own hair - the most common instance in cases of trichotillomania and trichophagia, but her daughter’s hair. The patient was doing this as an unconscious, spontaneous response to her daughter’s manifest hair loss caused by daughter’s malignancy and treatment thereof. The patient was given a diagnosis of Adjustment disorder and treated as such, as the patient’s symptoms resolved with her daughter’s remission. The patient’s cultural background was taken into consideration and the team explored cultural factors that could have mediated such a response. The team also explored the psychodynamic aspects of this case in order to attain a more comprehensive understanding of this patient’s unique presentation. To best describe this unusual behavior, we coined a term for such a phenomenon – allotrichophagia (Greek: eating others’ hair).
ISSN:2090-682X
2090-6838
DOI:10.1155/2022/5949321