Hairy Concerns: Use of Instructional/Informational Sheets for Assistance with Disorders of Hair

Abstract

Hair serves as a social sign of gender, age, status, values, and group membership. Hair is a major part of one's self-identity, and central to one's feeling of personal attractiveness. Treating a patient with hair loss and/or hair issues is not easy because of psychosocial overtones and patients' distress and body image concerns. In this paper, several common hair diseases will be discussed in consort with sample patient instructional sheets. They include trichorrhexis nodosa, telogen effluvium, pattern alopecia, alopecia areata, excess facial hair in females, and male pattern baldness. This paper therefore presents a template from which individual physicians can assess whether any portion of the material is worth being incorporated into their individual practices.