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There are only a certain number of ways to go crazy, and you can find most of them listed in the psychologist’s bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, currently in its fourth edition and commonly referred to as DSM-IV. But along with psych-ward greatest hits like schizophrenia and depression, the DSM lists some less-than-common conditions.
1. Trichotillomania
Trichotillomania is a compulsion to pluck one’s hair and often starts around age 12. A triichotillomaniac in Michigan says that she first started plucking her eyelashes in first grade. By fifth grade she had started pulling hair in earnest. She still does it today, although she over the years she has learned to manage the illness. “I now am a sales manager managing ten account executives and 30 of the largest accounts in the state of Michigan,” she writes. “I have not made less then six figures since I was 24. Oh [yeah]. I also suffer from trich[otillomania] and have bald spots and no eyelashes!”
In rare cases, trichotillomaniacs accumulate hairballs in the intestinal tract by chewing and swallowing the hair they pluck. You can see an extreme example at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C.—a huge hairball molded to the shape of a girl’s stomach. It took six years to form. [Photo courtesy of BattleAgainstBald.com.]
2. Othello Syndrome
Othello syndrome is also known as delusional or morbid jealousy—a conviction that your husband/wife/partner is cheating on you. It often leads sufferers to threaten to attack their spouses or to stalk the imagined lovers of their spouses. In one case, a woman accused her husband of fathering 10,000 children with a 70-year-old mistress.
3. Pyromania
Def Leppard’s breakthrough album is named after this rare fixation with fire. Pyromaniacs don’t set fires to destroy property, collect insurance, or draw attention; they are attracted to fire itself and may feel tense, aggressive, or piqued before lighting up. They may even hang out at fire departments or become firefighters so they can focus on fire all the time. Pyros tend to be men and tend to drink. Some experts argue that pyromania is a myth, a sexy label attached to mentally ill people who happen to set a fire. One infamous arsonist who had many characteristics of a pyromaniac was Paul Keller of Seattle, now serving a 99-year prison sentence. Keller started setting fires as a child and later tried join the fire department. An alcoholic, he set over 70 fires in his career, including one at a nursing home.
4. Folie a deux
Folie a deux is a delusion or psychosis shared by several people. One individual has a genuine mental illness, often schizophrenia, and their otherwise healthy friends or family members take on some of their neuroses. Psychologists have described families that believe they are infested with invisible parasites, includes Matrix-style robotic bugs. In one case, a French woman and her husband tried to kill her doctor, presumably for giving her the parasites. In a similar case, a woman began to see insects crawling her husband. Then the husband began to see them, too—but when doctors told the two to collect the bugs, they brought in a jar containing hair, thread, and bread crumbs. Once the husband was separated from his wife, he stopped seeing the bugs.
5. Caffeine Intoxication
The DSM contains a diagnosis for caffeine intoxication, which occurs when you ingest more than 250 milligrams of the stuff, about the amount in two cups of coffee. Not surprisingly, caffeine intoxication can contribute to panic and anxiety disorders.
6. Internet Addiction
Researchers in Israel have proposed a new diagnosis: internet addition. “The Internet provides inexpensive, interesting and comfortable recreation, but sometimes users get hooked. Thus, the computer-internet addiction concept has been proposed as an explanation for uncontrollable and damaging use.” Sound familiar?
The DSM also lists several mental syndromes unique to certain cultures and circumstances.
7. Brain fag
Brain fag is a common complaint among West African students. It’s sort of like “Teacher, my brain hurts,” accompanied by blurred vision and actual pain in the head or neck.
8. Koro
Koro, says the DSM, is a “sudden and intense anxiety that the penis (or, in females, the vulva and nipples) will recede into the body and possibly cause death.” Koro doesn’t just strike one unlucky person; it hits southeast Asia in waves of a mass hysteria in which everybody becomes terrified of death via genital retraction.
Chris Weber is an occasional contributor to mentalfloss.com.
Comments (34)
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This summer, in a psych summer seminar, we read a study about Koro. In some cases described in the paper, someone would have this sensation, and accuse people around them of stealing their genitalia via some sort of magic. Crowds would gather around and sometimes attack and beat the ‘offender’. I thought it was interesting as an example of culture-specific mental disorder.
posted by scoobnut on 4-8-2008 at 8:50 pm
I constantly pull on my hair because I find it relaxing and calming. My mom used to think I was going to turn into a Trichotillomaniac as an adult. I still pull on my hair really hard to calm down and relax. I don’t WANT to pull it out, but sometimes a few hairs do come out. I can’t stop, I’m doing it right now!
posted by Amanda on 4-8-2008 at 9:21 pm
There’s some kind of mental disorder that I can’t remember the name of in which the patient is under the delusion that members of his family and friends have been replaced by lookalikes.
There’s also a phenomenon called Stendhal syndrome where start to have symptoms similar to a panic attack when exposed to massive amounts of particularly beautiful art.
Many, many strange mental illnesses out there.
posted by Maddy on 4-8-2008 at 10:52 pm
I like the caffeine thing. So basically I suffer periods of mental illness since I do occasionally consume too much caffeine… I pull my hair, too (but I don’t pull it out- ever). Great. Maybe I’ll go see if there’s a piece of the Berlin Wall left for me to marry… oh wait, that was on Neatorama. It’s been an interesting week on my 2 favorite fun blogs- in the mental disorder department. Are you guys doing this on purpose?
posted by ann on 4-9-2008 at 2:14 am
I understood “folie à deux” to be more of a legal concept, wherein two or more people, working together, goad each other into performing acts that neither one would have ever done alone. The examples and definition in the article sound more like shared hallucinations to me.
posted by Ramsey on 4-9-2008 at 5:55 am
I think I have slight trichotillomania. I
tend to pluck the hairs on my fingers and armpits, but I never do it to the hair on my head.
posted by Mitsuki on 4-9-2008 at 6:15 am
this article couldn’t have been posted at a better time! One of my co-workers accidentally shaved his eyebrows over the weekend (he was shaving his head with an electric razor, went to even his eyebrows and forgot he didn’t have the attachment on his razor; by that time it was too late). Needless to say, we’ve been torturing him relentlessly by sending him various images including one from the movie “Powder.” I’ve forwarded the trichotillomania portion to him and will no doubt have even more fun with this.
posted by Pete on 4-9-2008 at 7:35 am
Going off on a tangent time! Following up on yesterday’s pets entry that got so many responses, animals can sometimes have similar conditions. Several species of pet parrots will pluck out thier own feathers. There is no known physical cause for this, and it is often attributed to stress.
posted by Eddd on 4-9-2008 at 7:43 am
I have trichotillomania. I started pulling my eyebrows in high school (I’m now 37) and have a permanent bald spot on one. At some point I abandoned my brows and now go for the eyelashes. I sometimes can go long periods of time without pulling but I always start up again. Right now I have very few eyelashes. I am very self concious about it but also pretty open. My friends and co-workers know about it and say they never noticed it until I said something about it. Don’t know why I do it–just a compulsion. It is classified as an OCD type disorder.
posted by Julie on 4-9-2008 at 7:56 am
I had a friend growing up who suffered from trichotillomania. She would sit for HOURS on the sink in her bathroom and just pluck pluck pluck whatever she could find. The worst part of it (for me at least, when we became roomates!) was that she would stick the hairs on the mirror. We had the hairiest bathroom mirror evah.
Ugh, so vomit.
posted by Jessica on 4-9-2008 at 8:32 am
How about this crazy one?! This was the highlight of neuroscience course in college!
~Hemispatial neglect is a neurological condition in which, after damage to one hemisphere of the brain, a deficit in attention to the opposite side of space is observed.
If someone with neglect is asked to draw a clock, their drawing might show only the numbers 12 and 1 to 6, the other side being distorted or left blank. Neglect patients may also ignore the contralesional side of their body, shaving or adding make-up only to the non-neglected side. Neglect may also present as a delusional form, where the patient denies ownership of a limb or an entire side of the body.
(from Wiki)
posted by kerensa on 4-9-2008 at 8:41 am
“Psych-ward greatest hits”?? People actually suffer from this stuff. I think this post was a little insensitive.
Buuuut, on a lighter note, I know of a syndrome unique to a certain culture: the summer camp where I worked. The kids would swim for hours and rub their feet on the sides of the (concrete) pool, making the bottoms of their toes raw. We counselors were ALWAYS having to take kids to the infirmary for “pool toe.”
posted by Katie D. on 4-9-2008 at 8:44 am
I guess for many of these there is a mild form (think internet use or hair plucking) and a more extreme, pathological form.
Here’s another: Scrupulosity, a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder with a religious twist. Click on the link for more.
posted by David H. on 4-9-2008 at 8:53 am
I definately have brain-fag at least once a week. When i’m zoning out, often in boredom, i’m furiously concentrating on my cuticles…not the hang nail part, but the invisible stuff that only the estheticians go for. then i end up with nail dandruff on my lap, and people looking at me strangely. Its quite satisfying though.
posted by Ella on 4-9-2008 at 9:05 am
Maddy…the delusion your referring to is called ‘Capgras delusion’ and it’s also referred to as ‘Imposter syndrome’.
Other very interesting psych related disorders are synesthesia, frottage, Stockholm syndrome and of course Munchausen’s syndrome!
In case anyone is bored and wants to do some research :)
posted by Erica on 4-9-2008 at 9:55 am
I have Trichotillomania, and I’ve had it since I was 15 or so. When I was really little, I used to love winding hair around my fingers (single strands), and I would search for them on blankets or pillows, but never pulled them out of my head. The it went away and reemerged when I was 15, but I started pulling it out of my head. Usually, I pull the thicker curly hairs around the cowlick in my head, or the little curly ones around the back scalp line. It’s hard to stop it, I don’t want to, but I DO at the same time. Sometimes I don’t even notice I’m doing it.
posted by Karleigh on 4-9-2008 at 10:19 am
Since I wear contacts and occasionally eyelashes will fall into my eye (or onto the contact lense) and cause intense irritation, I tend to pull my eyelashes out when I get bored. Early stages of trich? Who knows, but I don’t see it as a problem, more like preventative maintenance!
posted by Swifty on 4-9-2008 at 10:43 am
Do I suffer from trichotillomania if I like my hair pulled during intense intimiate moments?
posted by Daisy on 4-9-2008 at 11:24 am
About the African Brain fag:
I remember readings this article a few years ago about tribes peoples’ brains not developing the same way as westerners because they don’t sit in school and focus on a paper doing things like math problems, they either spend their time in a vast plain like environment where they are used to seeing a far distance or the opposite being in a forest and focusing only on things close up:
“Pygmies, however, who live deep in the rain forests of tropical Africa, are not often exposed to wide vistas and distant horizons, and therefore do not have sufficient opportunities to learn size constancy. One Pygmy, removed from his usual environment, was convinced he was seeing a swarm of insects when he was actually looking at a herd of buffalo at a great distance. When driven toward the animals he was frightened to see the insects “grow” into buffalo and was sure that some form of witchcraft had been at work.”
^ I found that in a different article but it is definitely an excerpt from the first article I mentioned
maybe they get brain fag because their eyes are not used to focusing on school work for long period of time. I remember when I first started working; sitting in front of a computer screen all day long. Driving home was painful for my eyes a few times because I had to focus on things farther away.
posted by Nastia on 4-9-2008 at 12:45 pm
If anyone’s interested there’s a movie that deals with Folie a deux, Perfect Blue (1998).
posted by Anthony on 4-9-2008 at 12:59 pm
Do I suffer from trichotillomania if I like my hair pulled during intense intimiate moments?
posted by Daisy on 4-9-2008 at 11:24 am
Send me your email address, let’s research.
posted by anon on 4-9-2008 at 2:23 pm
I used to work with a woman who had trichotillomania – it was fascinating watching her at meetings, as she’d scratch at the back of her head, pull out a hair, stretch it between her fingers and thumbs, stare at it for a moment, wind it around one finger, and then pop it into her mouth. Apparently, she was treating it with psychotherapy… I’m thinkin’ drugs, man, she needs SERIOUS DRUGS.
I myself have OCP – many, many library personnel do, trust me, we are probably the world’s largest workgroup of meds consumers…
posted by Marion on 4-9-2008 at 2:24 pm
I have some friends that have a fear of working.
my mistake…that is laziness.
posted by Enlightenment on 4-10-2008 at 12:34 am
I, for many years have found myself plucking out all my armpit hair mindlessly… an i also pluck out my nose hair with lil pliers, but that’s more for fun… one thing when i look at it from outside the compulsion to do it that i think is a bit odd is that i will pluck out beard hairs, but only the ones that are thicker then the rest of them, or different ones, and yeah, i stick the REALLY thick ones to the mirror.. when i was in my teens, i would occasionally get episodes where i would pluck out large patches of my goatee, or beard, whatever i was wearing at the time…but that was usually only during high stress or turmoil at first, it comes and goes, so i mostly just keep my face shaved, and sate the urges with the nose/armpit hair… there’s something soo satisfying about getting a big old clump of nose hairs and just yank um all out with the little pliers.. i used to pluck my backside too but that hair is really hard to get a grip on .. too much of a hassle.. and yeah, i will some times pull a few eyebrow hairs, but thats not really compulsive..
posted by Dose on 4-10-2008 at 1:15 am
Hey Dose -
I don’t think you’re supposed to pluck nose hairs, I think there’s a danger of infection. Just buy one of those little nose razors, but don’t get the twisty kind, they suck, make sure it’s a little flat razor. It makes a great buzzing sound, and you can use it for monobrow, bushy ears, whatever.
Try not to shave off your eyebrows though, it looks wierd.
posted by Marion on 4-10-2008 at 11:47 am
My cousin has Trichotillomania, which is the first I’d ever heard of it. I like pulling on my hair when I’m upset. I’ll grab a fistful and tug until I’m not mad anymore. I don’t pull any hairs out on purpose. I wonder if that has a name…
posted by Henna on 4-28-2008 at 1:06 am
have we met before?
posted by daisy on 4-28-2008 at 2:00 am
I suffer from mild trichotillomania. I don’t pull the hair on my head, or my eyelashes or eyebrows, just the whiskers on my face. I didn’t even start growing any until my early 20’s, and even now they grow so slowly and sparsely that I’ve never needed to shave, but just pluck the few whiskers out with tweezers. I don’t eat the hairs or leave them anywhere though, I just don’t like the feeling of whiskers poking through the skin on my face so I somewhat obsessively remove them. I occasionally pluck my nose hairs absent-mindedly, but that’s the worst it gets for me.
posted by Beavinator on 5-2-2008 at 12:51 pm
I’d have to say that plucking your eyebrows is probably the strangest disorder Ive heard of other than trying to eat yourself
posted by Pyscho Quiz on 5-5-2008 at 3:59 pm
I’m 15 I’ve had trichotillomania for a while now…it started after I moved, so it’s probably attributed to stress and sadness from moving away from my friends (and not making any new ones). I have bad days where I can’t seem to stop, and good days where I just pluck out a few absentmindedly – apparently most people have specific triggers, which unfortunately I haven’t been able to pinpoint yet.
However, I feel really bad for people who eat their hair after they pull it. I usually chew on the little piece of flesh on the end (gross, right? I can’t stand leaving it on though), but I’ve never eaten a hair – the very thought sickens me. It’s supposed to be very painful, however, when it starts to bunch up in the stomach and intestines. It’s horrible.
I don’t seem to have any other weird habits like sticking it on the mirror or anything (that confuses me a bit, but I’m sure just the fact that I pull out my own hair is weird enough…).
Anyways, the last one, Koro, amused me a lot (though it probably shouldn’t…now I feel insensitive). Some of this stuff is fantastic!
posted by Melissa on 11-17-2008 at 10:03 pm
My co-worker pulls …his beard hair. Folks, it’s the most disgusting scene on earth. Not to discourage all other pluckers, but maybe it will help, whatever you’re doing induces vomiting in people who have to be around you
posted by Duh on 12-1-2008 at 11:04 pm
I have dermatillomania and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Dermatillomania is related to trichotillomania except instead of pulling out hair, I compulsively pick at my skin, especially the skin on my upper arms. It sucks because I have scars and the rest on my arms because of it.
posted by rich on 3-7-2009 at 5:15 pm
I suffer from trichotillomania. I absolutely love the feeling i get from plucking my eyebrow hair and some other hairs. Usually i use a tweezer but i prefer my fingers, which is less efficient and prolongs the feeling. There are days where i have small bruises on my eyelid.
If I have nothing to keep my hands occupied, i used to peel my nails. It’s painful and potentially dangerous as I suffered from fungi infection under my nails before. Plus my vanity took over and I decided that nice nails are prettier.
I am glad I have not started eating my hair yet.
posted by Ling on 10-20-2009 at 11:19 pm
“brain fag”? Offensive slurs aside, it sounds like a simple case of laziness and unwillingness to cooperate with the teacher. My classes in high school are full of kids who’d jump at the chance to be taken seriously with such complaints.
posted by Sel on 10-30-2009 at 9:18 pm