"devastating"

Health Joe Gatt plays 0718 in the new Star Trek films (in the comics the character is revealed to be a humanoid manifestation of the Enterprise ala Idris in The Doctor's Wife in Doctor Who) and is an alopecia sufferer. On the franchise's official website he writes about how he's lived with the disorder and how people treated him:

"As most of you – especially my Star Trek fans -- know, I have alopecia, an autoimmune disorder that causes the body to attack its own hair follicles, thus preventing hair growth. It doesn't affect the body in any other way and is not contagious. This happened to me when I was about 11 years old, initially, with some patchy hair loss, and then at 14 all of my hair fell out. By the time I was 14 1/2 I was totally hairless... and have been pretty much that way ever since. As you can imagine, this is a pretty devastating thing to happen to a kid. The teasing, the bullying, the ignorant comments, the discrimination, the judgements… I didn't see a way forward. I didn't leave the house. If I did it was always with a cap on. My friends deserted me, all except one."