Peladophobia: symptoms and treatment

According to most women, bald men are very sexy and attractive, some men consider bald women to be very attractive and interesting. But this does not sound reassuring to those who are panicky afraid to suddenly lose their hair. Such people are called peladophobes.

Peladophobia - an irrational fear of baldness, fear of bald people. Initially, a person with such a mental disorder is frightened by the prospect of baldness. He is reminded of such a probability by the bald people he met, and therefore fear extends in most cases to them.

Almost equally, peladophobia affects both men and women. This phobic disorder can develop in young and old, in adolescents. There are no age-related signs of fear.

But trichologists (hair health experts) note that very often people turn to them with complaints of extreme concern about the prospects of baldness, while not having any obvious prerequisites for hair loss. It is possible that many of them suffer from peladophobia.

It should be distinguished people who are squeamish or critical of bald people. This is a matter of culture, education, personal preferences and tastes, but not a phobic mental disorder. A true peladophobe does not criticize bald people; he is simply afraid of them, because he himself is afraid to become like that.

Peladophobes pay too much attention to their hair, their health. They are ready to spend huge sums on healing procedures, on modern innovative hair care products.They often restlessly examine their hairline in the mirrors.

In this case, mild forms of peladophobia can remain almost unnoticed by others - a person just tries not to come close to a bald colleague, does not make friends with him, does not drink tea with him during the lunch break.

The more pronounced stages of the phobic disorder are accompanied by obvious vegetative symptoms, which the peladophobe cannot control, no matter how hard it tries. He avoids places where bald people can meet, and given that they can meet everywhere, a person is in constant tension. In a sudden meeting with a bald man, if it was not possible to avoid it, the phobia begins to experience symptoms of adrenaline on its body:

• blood pressure rises, heart rate, pulse increase;
• protrudes cold sweat on the palms, face, back;
• there is a feeling of loss of reality, a person does not control the situation around;
• the pupils dilate, the skin turns pale;
• there is a feeling of lack of air for normal breathing;
• dry out in the mouth;
• tremors may occur (trembling hands, lips);
• in severe cases, dizziness, loss of consciousness occurs.

A panic attack passes after the frightening factor disappears. After a panic attack, a person feels tired, broken, ashamed of his possibly public inappropriate behavior.

It is common for all peladophobes to pay great attention to the search for new methods and medicines for hair; they practice various folk and medical methods.

It is known that Peladophobia suffers Hollywood actor Tom Cruise. He does not hide the fact that he is very afraid of becoming bald, and therefore does not spare money for caring for the scalp. The actor flatly refuses the roles of bald characters, even if in general he likes the script. After forced communication with the bald, Cruz visits his psychoanalyst, because, according to him, he needs to restore mental strength.

Peladophobia refers to a mental disorder of the phobic type. It is an overreaction to a situation that the human brain perceives as dangerous. It is clear that Alopecia is not a danger to human life, many without a single hair on their heads live a long and completely happy life, and therefore the fear of baldness is unreasonable, irrational, which has nothing to do with the manifestations of the natural instinct of self-preservation for a person.

Psychiatrists studying this phenomenon have concluded that Often the cause of fear is heredity. At the same time, fear is not inherited, but the behavioral model of the ancestor - if one of the parents was terribly afraid of losing hair and the child watched this throughout his childhood, he perceives this adult model as genuine, and he does the same thing without thinking much and why, in fact, he is so afraid of baldness.

The prospect, which is quite real, causes anxiety, which is constantly present and accumulates, resulting in a real phobic disorder.

The cause of peladophobia can be some unpleasant and traumatic psyche events that happened in childhood. For example, a child has become a victim of violence, abuse by a bald man. The reason may lie in a different kind of experience: for some reason, the child was shaved baldly, which caused a flurry of ridicule and bullying by peers who firmly connected two phenomena in the subconscious - a feeling of unhappiness and bald head.

For example, an impressionable and very anxious child or teenager can get a huge impression from other people’s story from watching a movie in which the bald man was a clear antihero.

It is impossible to deal with peladophobia independently. It is important to work with incorrect settings, and therefore you need to entrust it to a psychiatrist or psychotherapist. The doctor will be able to detect the causes and eliminate their consequences. A very effective method is rational psychotherapy - after a course of treatment, a person will begin to tolerate the process of baldness as an inevitable age-related change that does not threaten life.

Medications are not considered effective in the case of peladophia, but if the fear of bald is associated with a high level of anxiety, depression, then at the discretion of the doctor can be applied antidepressants and sedatives.

For the strangest phobias, see below.