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

Abstract

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).