Protecting Your Child from the Stigma of Hair Loss Protecting Your Child from the Stigma of Hair Loss

The emotional effects of hair loss are often significantly more distressing on children than on adults. The child suffering from this condition often doesn’t understand the cause as an adult does and tends to think that there’s just something wrong with him/her. Additionally, other children will often subject the child to teasing for looking different.

Some myths about children’s hair loss are that vitamin deficiency, poor scalp circulation, headbands, hats, or cold weather can bring it on. The causes of hair loss in children are unfortunately not quite that simple.

The causes of children’s hair loss are numerous and varied including: trauma resulting from an accident, symptoms of birth defects, scarring from surgery to remedy birth defects, and alopecia areata (an autoimmune condition in which the body mistakenly forms antibodies against its own hair follicles.) This condition commonly begins with the rapid onset of bald spots over the scalp. Although one smooth bald spot is most common, many may be seen, and every hair on the body may be lost in some patients.

Current treatments attempt to stop the hair loss process, but this condition has a propensity to recur again and again. The most common approaches to treating this distressing problem include injections of cortisone, UVA light in combination with a topical photosensitizing medicine, Rogaine®, and anthralin.

Other causes of hair loss in children are

While surgical methods, such as microscope-assisted follicular grafting, are often chosen for those with baldness due to trauma, a non-surgical approach should always be selected for children with alopecia areata or other disorders.

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