Although beauty rituals may not be the primary consideration of mental health, the response to the account of a teenage client with depression provided by an American hairdresser was significant.

Kayley Olsson, a 20-year-old student hairdresser in Waterloo, Iowa, published a Facebook post on Tuesday in which she described a young female client who had presented at her salon with severely matted and tangled hair.

Kayley’s post, which has been shared over 55,000 times, details an encounter with a 16-year-old girl who has been grappling with depression for several years.

The adolescent had a school photograph scheduled and requested that the salon remove all her hair because she was unwilling to endure the discomfort of combing out the matted knots and tangles.

However, Kayley and her colleague Mariah Wenger, both beauty therapy students, refused to shear the teenager’s waist-length hair.

The woman then proceeded to untangle and comb the teenager’s hair for 10 hours, spending a total of two days with her.

A significant amount of encouragement, reassurance, and dialogue was necessary to alleviate her concerns about the associated discomfort with removing the matting, thereby enhancing her self-esteem and confidence.

Following the detangling process to the level of the shoulders, Kayley and Mariah cut and shaped the teenager’s hair.

“To articulate the sentiment succinctly, it is sufficient to state that both parties experienced a profound sense of elation.

Kayley explained that the subject had previously stated that she would be smiling for her school photographs that day and that the interviewer had made her feel like herself again.

The post has received close to 60,000 comments (at the time of writing), including accounts from women relating their own experiences of mental health problems.