1874-3722/08 2008 Bentham Open Open Access 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, te-logen 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 be-ing incorporated into their individual practices. Scalp hair has been endowed with greater social and psy-chological significance than biological importance. Medi-cally, it merely provides some shielding from ultraviolet rays and some cushioning of the cranium from head gear. Histori-cally and culturally, hair serves as a social sign of gender, age, status, values, and group membership. As stated previ-ously, "from monks to skinheads, prisoners of war to warri-ors, bigwig European aristocrats to mop top Beatles, an