Hair Loss and Its Psychological Effect on Women

It can be very painful for a man to lose his hair. It’s associated with the advance of age, loss of physical strength, the feeling to not be attractive to women anymore. And it usually happens at a time when a man enters his first mid-life crisis, thereby exacerbating the effect.

But it is far more difficult for women to lose their hair. There are quite a few scientific studies that prove that women suffer more emotional and psychological pain than men. And those psychological effects are more severe than what men generally go through when they lose their hair.

In those above mentioned studies men and women who suffered from hair loss responded to questionnaires that were designed and administered by psychologists and general physicians. And the results showed that for women their appearance was far more important than for men, that they had a deep psychological investment in the way they look. It was far more important for them how other people perceived them, and it was not a question of just being vain. So they reacted more strongly to a change in that appearance.

An old saying goes that the hair of a woman is her ‘crowning’ glory, and that’s the way the female participants in the studies tended to feel about their hair. They experienced a loss of self worth, they lost self esteem when the hair began falling out.

Hair loss occurs in both sexes. But in men there is a general pattern when and how fast their hair falls out, and it is generally recognized. So nobody is really surprised when a man starts getting bald at a certain age. The man’s family and friends might commiserate with him about the hair loss, even try to help him to find some humor in it. But women who lose their hair don't have that kind of support system of friends and family, and they feel that their condition is not being taken seriously. This is because the pattern of hair loss in women is more diffuse and it doesn’t necessarily begin at a certain age. That’s why most people underestimate the psychological effects of hair loss in women.

For men it is generally easier to cope with their hair loss than for women, who for example try to hide the fact that they are losing hair. Or they might try to develop a hair style that covers the area where the hair loss is the most obvious. They might spent more energy on other aspects of their physical appearance in order to divert attention from their hair loss.

What are the recommendations for a woman who starts losing her hair? She should first of all talk to a certified dermatologist in order to find out the cause of her hair loss. She should than learn the options she has for treating her condition, these options obviously being based on the diagnosis of her dermatologist. After considering the different procedures and their costs she should then decide upon a course of action. One of those options is obviously the restoration of her hair by a physician with experience in surgical hair restoration.