BAD HAIR LIFE



A one-hour, first-person documentary about trichotillomania – the compulsion to pull out one’s hair. The film is directed by Jennifer Raikes, a producer at Middlemarch, who has lived with this disorder since childhood.

SYNOPSIS
Millions of people from infants to grandparents, experience an uncontrollable compulsion to pull out their hair, strand by strand, resulting in bare spots or even total baldness. Hair-pulling most often strikes girls on the verge of adolescence, and it often lasts a lifetime. Approximately 2% of Americans suffer from this disorder, called trichotillomania.

So why have so few heard of it?

BAD HAIR LIFE is a first-person documentary exploring this often deeply secretive disorder. The documentary presents intimate portraits of people at different stages of coping with hair pulling. Using art, photography and interviews, the film examines the importance of hair to our identities and the cultural forces that make this disorder feel shameful.

CREDITS
Produced, Written and Directed by Jennifer Raikes
Editor: Sharon Sachs
Executive Producers: Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer

PURCHASE
www.trich.org

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS FILM OR TRICHOTILLOMANIA: www.trich.org

REVIEWS

BAD HAIR LIFE is a poignant movie about the lives of people struggling to control their urge to pull hair. Trichotillomania is the diagnostic label, and its symptoms can be dry words till the emotions are experienced watching this movie. For the mental health clinician, there is no better way to begin to understand and empathize.
Philip Ninan, MD, Director, Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program, Emory University School of Medicine

Magnificent in its ability to be moving, insightful, and educational.... I think that the movie will be tremendously helpful to professionals in training, really a must see.
Ruth Golomb, MEd, co-author, THE HAIRPULLING "HABIT" AND YOU

I would recommend Ms. Raikes' film not only to trich sufferers, who would feel that their story has at last been told, I would also recommend it to their families and friends to help give them as close a sense of what this disorder is all about without actually having it. I would further recommend it to the many psychologists, psychiatrists, and other practitioners out there, whose professional training shamefully tends to exclude information about disorders of this type.
Fred Penzel, PhD, Film Review published in the OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE FOUNDATION NEWSLETTER