are NOT talking about the immune system being stressed. They have no clue that alopecia is an auto-immune disorder. They're talking about the everyday stress we all know so well. There's simply a long standing and totally erroneous notion that stress causes hair loss. And yes, there is clearly an implied blame somewhere.
Trust me. I've been dealing this for more than twenty-five years now.
There is a LOT of magical thinking around things like alopecia areata. I've attended many of the yearly conferences of the National Alopecia Areata Foundation, and it can be very frustrating to hear people who are absolutely convinced that some new concoction of vitamins, or a particular diet, or something else will cure the alopecia. One of the very bizarre things about alopecia is that sometimes, for totally unknown reasons, a person's hair will all grow back, even after having been totally bald for years. Things like that tend to fuel the magical thinking.
As for autism, my oldest son, the one with Asperger's, was different from infancy. He simply was not like other babies. I even had the good fortune to be part of a support group of brand-new first-time parents, and even then I didn't realize that my son was not simply his own unique self, like all other humans. He was different in a more profound way. It took us until he was 18 to figure out he had Asperger's, in part because that diagnosis didn't exist until he was already 12 years old. He was also my first child; had he been born second, I would have recognized how different he was much sooner.
I also have come to understand that there's nothing really wrong with someone with Asperger's. They are different, that's all. Many of them are kind and funny and very smart and they are a delight to be around. It's the rest of the world that's out of step with them.
= new reply since forum marked as read