Whenever Rebecca Brown was stressed or upset when she was growing up she would play with her hair for comfort.By the time she was 16 her habit had escalated into a full-blown psychological disorder - which left her almost completely bald.Doctors failed to diagnose the condition for five years, simply telling her to stop being a fidget. Meanwhile at school she endured cruel taunts and nasty looks from her classmates.Feeling lost and alone, she started taking a photograph of herself every day, chronicling her experiences on the internet in a blog and in YouTube videos with brutal honesty.To her utter surprise the response was overwhelming – and to her delight it was supportive.As a result, her self-confidence has grown back – and so has her hair.Miss Brown, now 20, has become a heroine to thousands of other sufferers of trichotillomania, a disorder characterised by the uncontrollable urge to pluck out the hair, usually from the scalp but also sometimes eyebrows and eyelashes.Her videos have been viewed 12million times and she receives so much  fan mail online it takes her three hours a week to reply to it all. She was even mobbed by fans when she attended a conference on the condition in the US  this year.Miss Brown said: ‘I get a lot of post from people who confide in me about their trichotillomania, yet they haven’t told their family or friends. I feel very blessed that people trust me like that.’Miss Brown played with hair obsessively as a child and began pulling out clumps when she was a teenager. She said: ‘I started going to the doctor about it when I was 13 but they didn’t diagnose it until 18. Before I was diagnosed, doctors advised me to do all sorts of silly things. One doctor told me to stop fidgeting and another told me to sit on my hands.‘Some people say trichotillomania is a result of childhood trauma but for me, pulling my hair has been a comfort thing. I do it a lot when I am stressed or upset.‘A lot of people at school and college didn’t understand why I was going bald. Lots of people mockingly called me “baldie”. But it was the horrible looks that I got from other kids that was the worst thing.’ At one point she had so little hair she shaved her head to make herself feel better; at other times she wore wigs.By the time she was 14 she decided to find out for herself what was happening to her. She did an internet search for ‘hair pulling’ and discovered what trichotillomania was.Miss Brown, from Chelmsford, Essex, said: ‘All that came up in the search results were three not-so-brilliant videos on the disorder.‘I decided to upload my own, no-holds-barred video.’  In some photos, she wrote the name of her disorder on her forehead in marker pen with an arrow pointing to her last remaining bristles as she attempted to explain the condition to the outside world.Miss Brown, who is in her final year at film school in London, believes that posting the videos on the internet has aided her recovery. ‘I have found it hard to speak to councillors but it has always felt easy to talk to a webcam,’ she said.A spokesman for Trichotillomania Support said: ‘It is important that sufferers know they are not alone and they should not be ashamed of asking for support.’(dailymail.co.uk)ANN.Az