Alopecia UK and The Centre for Appearance Research (CAR) are pleased to announce the publication of our new paper ‘Men’s Experiences of Alopecia Areata’. This paper presents the findings of our research project which looked at men's experiences of AA and their support needs.

Fabio Zucchelli, Research Fellow at CAR, who conducted the study said:

“The research focuses on men because they are under-represented in research, not by design but because we just don’t often get men coming forward to participate so we wanted in this study to ask questions men can relate to”.

Kerry Montgomery, Alopecia UK's Psychological Wellbeing Lead adds:

“We know from the men we speak to that many experience as much distress as women and feel frustrated that there is much less awareness of male alopecia. It’s true that the majority of journalists who approach us ask for women to speak to, and news stories tend to focus on women too. We wanted to really focus on men’s experiences to help us find out more about how Alopecia UK can help, as well as giving men a voice to tell others how it actually is”.

Interviews were carried out with 18 men who talked about their experiences of having alopecia areata, how it affected them and society's expectations around appearance. You can read the full study here or you can read our short summary here.

We want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who participated in the study, the VTCT Foundation for funding the project. We would also like to thank our wonderful collaborators from CAR, Fabio Zucchelli and Nick Sharratt.