George Bell

Who are you?

Hey, my name's George Bell. I'm 31 senior marketing Manager here at JAAQ. I'm here to talk today about hair loss, hair transplants, and the impact that losing my hair has had on my mental health. I'm not a trained mental health or hair loss expert or clinician, but what I am here to do today is just share my own candid experience and hopefully answer the questions that you might be having, questions that I know I struggled with five, 10 years ago, and just hopefully help you on your journey.

What is your background?

I followed the sort of normal life path when I was younger. I sort of felt that I had to grow up in a certain way and look a certain way, and I went to an all boys school, so I thought there was a certain way of being a boy as well, whether that's kicking a football or talking to girls all the time, or whatever it might be. And then when I left school and went to uni and left uni, I sort of followed a traditional career path as well. I thought that I had to go up to the city and I had to wear a suit and I had to work a nine to five or whatever it might be. But I think I always had struggled with my sense of self and what it meant to be a man for me and really my mental health for quite a long, long period of my life. I just didn't really know it. I think I never quite fit into the stereotypical image of what it meant to be a man. I think I didn't like football and I was quite skinny and I didn't really like the gym and I was quite feminine with some of my traits. So I think that had always been underlying for me, and it really just came out when I was about 19, 20, 21, and I really started to struggle with my mental health. And I went on this long, long journey with becoming more self-aware around who I was and what it meant to be a man for me and my own mental health. And I went through therapy and various other forms of treatment, which actually led me to working in the mental health space as well. So I've been in the mental health space for about seven, eight years now. But yeah, it's been a really, really long journey for me with my mental health and hair loss and body image has been a really, really big part of that as well.

What age were you when you started to lose your hair?

So I've always had a pretty large forehead or high hairline. My hair has definitely gone on its own sort of journey over, well, the last 30 years. I mean, the pictures of me when I was young, I had really, really long blonde hair, which I miss every day, which slowly progressed into kind of curly brown hair. And then, yeah, over the years it's sort of reduced more and more I should say. But I think I really, really became apparent Of me losing my hair around the age of 2021. Think I does, was always conscious Of it. My dad doesn't have much hair and my granddad didn't either, So I always knew that it might be something That was passed down But I think because I'd grown up with this long blonde hair and then long brown hair, I thought I'd sort of dodged it. But then, yeah, around 2021, I realised it was getting patchy in some places or I could start to and it was maybe becoming a little bit thinner. And then it's gradually got thinner and thinner over the last 10 years or so.

How did you first feel when you knew you were starting to lose your hair?

Did you try to cover your hair loss at all?