Sis, It’s Not You, It’s Life: Stress and Hair Loss

By Sherika Caliste, LMSW

6 min read

If you are Black and a woman anywhere in this world, you carry the burden of those identities. Social and economic factors like poverty, racial discrimination, limited access to high quality health care, housing, and higher rates of incarceration exist in some Black communities.

What are those burdens?

Black women are often bypassed in discussions about sexism and racism related to social justice movements, and because of that, their unique needs are often overlooked as well. The systemic disregard of Black women and their needs can cause chronic stress, consequently leading to hair loss. This essay will discuss how stress could influence hair loss when the distinct needs of Black women are unmet. 

Stress has been defined as the physiological response of the body when an individual must cope, adjust, or adapt (Nevid & Rathus, 2003).

Stress is essential to push us to make necessary changes in our lives. It signals when we may be in danger and inspires us to take action to get ourselves out of danger. In this way, feelings of stress are healthy and necessary; without it, we may not act in our own best interest. However, prolonged or intense stress can be overwhelming to the body. Chronic, or long-term stress, is a form of stress that stems from ongoing sentiments of hopelessness. When an individual experiences stress, hormones such as cortisol and catecholamines are released (NIH, 2011). Long-term arousal of the stress-response system could disturb almost all of the body’s natural processes and increase the risk for many health problems (NIH, 2011). Subsequently, stress can prematurely age the immune system and serve as a risk factor for diseases related to hair loss, such as alopecia areata and central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia. 

As it relates to hair loss, studies have shown that significant or long-term stress is considered a cause. Stress promotes the shift of actively growing hair follicles into a phase of inhibitory growth (Botchkarev, 2003). This shift is likely due to inflammation of the scalp caused by profound hair growth inhibitory catagens and corticotrophin-releasing hormone being induced by high amounts of stress (Botchkarev, 2003). These hormones weaken an individual’s immune system and promotes inflammation. Inflammation of the scalp can lead to scarring and eventually permanent hair loss if not treated. Hair loss conditions such as central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia (CCCA) are likely to occur. Within CCCA, hair loss usually appears at the crown of the head, and spreads centrifugally. While there are no known causes of CCCA, one fact about the condition is that it mostly impacts women of African descent. 

Black women are not a monolith; however, research has frequently documented the continual impacts of bias, systemic oppression, and unequal treatment of Black women. Considerable evidence proves that racial differences in socioeconomic, education, and housing outcomes among women are the result of discrimination, segregation, and historical laws enacted with the purpose to oppress Black people and women in the United States. The intersection of race and gender has a direct influence on the health of Black women. Black women are subjected to high levels of sexism, racism, and discrimination at levels that are not experienced by White women or Black men. These social conditions create and promote an environment for health inequities and disparities to exist, a disproportionate amount of stress being one of them. 

To conclude, Black women and hair loss have a very intimate and often shameful connection. Historical and societal factors induce chronic stress, which can lead to hair loss, and can eventually cause psychological distress due to the hair loss it’s caused. It is a vicious cycle that feeds into capitalism, patriarchy, and the continual disregard for the physical, financial, and emotional needs of Black women. 

References

Botchkarev, VA. (2003). Stress and the hair follicle: Exploring  the connections. Am J Pathol, 162, 709–712.

National Institute of Health. (2011). http://www.nih.gov/

Nevid, J. & Rathus, S. (2003). Psychology and the challenges of life: Adjustments in the new millenium, 8th edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Sherika Caliste is a psychotherapist and clinical social worker that is based in New York City. What she plans to focus on during her time with the PsychoHairapy Research lab is the relationship between the unique stresses that plague people of color and hair loss. Sherika’s writing secret is listening to lo-fi beats as a form of meditation as she writes. It provides a level of both distraction and calm that is conducive to her writing process.