The purpose of the current study is: 1. To evaluate the effectiveness of a habit reversal training (HRT) approach for children ages 7 to 17 years of age inclusive with a diagnosis of trichotillomania. 2. To explore factors that may relate to symptom severity, treatment outcome, and psychosocial impairment (e.g., specific symptom presence, co-morbidity, emotional regulation).
The purpose of this research study is to further investigate how well Habit Reversal Training (HRT) works to reduce hair-pulling symptoms in children and adolescents with trichotillomania (TTM). All children will have the option to receive 8 weekly HRT sessions. Half of all children will be chosen at random to receive these sessions immediately following the pre-assessment and the remaining half will receive them after eight weeks (TAU condition). These sessions will focus developing skills for managing TTM and to decrease hair pulling. Such skills may include teaching your child to replace hair-pulling with another behavior. In the TAU condition, participants will seek the treatment in the community, with the option of receiving HRT treatment sessions at the end of the study. Participants in both groups will undergo four assessments in total (1) Pre-Assessment; (2) Post-treatment Assessment; (3) One-month Follow-up; (4)Three-month Follow-up. These assessments will involve several interviews that ask about different psychological symptoms that your child experiences such as sadness, anxiety, and TTM.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE
Enrollment
50
* 8 weekly therapy sessions lasting 50 minutes based on the protocol outlined by Woods (2001). * The overall focus of treatment is to provide patients with tools to help them manage and reduce hair-pulling. * components: * Session 1. (a) to develop an understanding of the subject's hair-pulling through an initial interview; and (b) to establish a protocol for ongoing assessment. * Session 2. implement habit reversal, including awareness training, competing response training, and social support. * Sessions 3-8. For subjects with a single hair-pulling site, Session 3 will review and practice HRT procedures and name solutions to problems that may have arisen. For those with multiple hair-pulling sites, treatment will be reviewed for the first site in the hierarchy.
Rothman Center for Pediatric Neuropsychiatry
St. Petersburg, Florida, United States
Massachusetts General Hospital Hairpulling Scale (MGHHS)
This measure assesses the number of hair-pulling urges, the intensity of the urges, the ability of the patients to distract themselves from the urge to pull their hair, the number of hair-pulling incidents, attempts to resist hair-pulling, the ability to resist hair-pulling, and feeling uncomfortable about hair-pulling. Individual items are rated for severity from 0 (no symptoms) to 4 (extreme symptoms).
Time frame: 5 months
NIMH-TIS
The NIMH-TIS is a clinician rated scale (0-10 rating) measuring overall impairment produced by the time spent pulling or concealing damage, ability to control pulling, severity of alopecia, interference, and incapacitation caused by the pulling.
Time frame: 5 months
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