For more than 20 years, Aneela Idnani Kumar hid her hair pulling disorder.

Disguising her absent eyebrows with makeup and concealing her isolation with smiles, Idnani Kumar kept her trichotillomania a secret from even her husband.

A mental health condition in the family of obsessive compulsive disorders, people with trichotillomania, “trich” for short, are plagued by irresistible urges to pull out their eyebrows, eyelashes, hair on their heads or anywhere else on their body.