Trichotillomania, or hair pulling disorder, affects an estimated two to four percent of the population. It's a disorder that makes people recurrently pull out their hair—from their head, from their eyelashes and eyebrows, even from their underarms, chests, legs, and other parts of the body. According to the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), trichotillomania falls under the category of obsessive-compulsive and related disorders; people with the disorder repeatedly try to quit or cut down on their hair pulling, and it can cause them significant distress.
One person suffering from this is Rebecca Brown, a 21-year-old from the United Kingdom. Brown has taken a selfie pretty much every single day for the past six and half years, from age 14 on, and she bravely created a time-lapse video of the photos. The video documents the ups and downs of Brown's life and experience with trichotillomania and an obsessive skin picking disorder that she also suffers from, according to her YouTube channel.
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Brown annotated the candid and courageous video to explain what was going on in her life at each point—from when she headed to college, when she began dating her first real boyfriend, when she started wearing wigs, even when she was diagnosed with depression and went through suicidal periods.
In a comment on the video's YouTube page, Brown writes, "Watching this back is rather scary for me, it makes me both sad and happy at the same time. I'm not an exceptionally happy person and don't pretend to be. What I will say is, that when you see the smiles in this, especially after the baldness happens... those smiles are genuine. I'd rather look back and see a project filled with honesty, than seeing 2,000 photos of fake smiles."
For more information about Brown, you can visit her YouTube channel dedicated to living with trichotillomania. And to learn more about the disorder, head to trich.org.
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