When a depressed teen walked into Kayley Olsson’s salon with matted hair, it broke the hairdresser’s heart. So, she spent two days painstakingly transforming the girl’s appearance.

Image: Facebook/Kayley Olsson / Facebook/Kayley Olsson

When one depressed teen entered her local hair salon, she felt completely worthless. Indeed, her illness was so severe that she’d given up on brushing her locks. But after her hairdresser had spent two days transforming her matted mane, she’d found a reason to smile again.

And the stylist who helped turn the teen’s hair around was Kayley Olsson, who lives in Waterloo, Iowa. The 20-year-old was a student hairdresser at the city’s Capri College beauty school at the time. And her work not only allowed Olsson to transform her clients, but also to get to know those in her salon chair.

In August 2017, however, Olsson met a client who she would never forget. She was a 16-year-old girl. And when she walked into the salon, the trainee stylist couldn’t help but notice her extremely matted hair.

Nevertheless, Olsson invited the girl to sit in her chair and began chatting to her. And that’s when the teen opened up about her tragic story. She explained that following her parents’ divorce a few years prior, she had fallen into a spiral of depression.

And sadly, the girl’s depression was so bad that it took over her entire life. “She started explaining to me how she feels and told me how she used to be involved in so many sports – every sport you could play,” Olsson told CBS News in August 2017. “But in the last two years, mental health just took over.”

In the end, the illness caused the teen to give up on her appearance completely. Indeed, because she felt so worthless, she stopped brushing her hair altogether. In the depths of her depression, moreover, she would only move to use the bathroom.

Hearing her client’s story broke Olsson’s heart. And it may have troubled the hairdresser in part because she empathized with the teenager’s feelings of worthlessness. That’s because she, too, has battled depression.

Fortunately, though, things were looking up for the girl; for instance, she now felt well enough to return to high school. But there was just one problem: she would need her picture taken for the new term. And that meant attending to the knotted mass of hair attached to her head. Convinced there was no hope for it, however, she simply told Olsson to “just shave it.”

Olsson, however, had other ideas. She told CBS News that, instead, she turned to the girl and said, “We’re going to try as much as we can without having to use the clippers. I can’t promise anything, but I’m going to try my hardest to keep the length of hair that you want.”

Her client, though, said that she didn’t think she could bear the pain of having it all combed out, and once again she described herself as “worthless.” But Olsson reassured her that she’d do her very best to leave her with hair of which she could be proud.

Slowly, then, the hairdresser started to untangle the knots. In fact, that day Olsson spent eight hours patiently and painstakingly combing out the tangles, not rushing the process in order to be as gentle as possible. However, the job was nowhere near done at the end of the long shift. As a consequence, Olsson asked the teen to return to the salon the following day.

And the next day, the hairdresser continued to comb out her client’s locks. It took another five hours, in fact, to get them to the point where she could work with them. Now, she was finally able to put down her comb and lead the teen over to the basin.

After washing her hair, Olsson returned the girl to her chair and began chopping her now-silky mane. She trimmed it to a stylish shoulder-length cut and finished the look off by curling the ends.

Finally, after 13 hours of work, the hairdresser had achieved her goal. She had saved the majority of the teen’s hair and transformed her overall look. Now, all she had to do was ask for her client’s opinion.

But the girl didn’t even have to say anything for Olsson to know that she’d done a great job. As she looked at herself in the mirror, a grin spread across her face. “I will actually smile for my school’s pictures today,” she told Olsson. “You made me feel like me again.”

Indeed, the experience moved Olsson so much that she later shared the teen’s story online. In her account of the tale, she kept the schoolgirl’s identity hidden but added the astounding before-and-after pictures. However, the post was about much more than showing off Olsson’s hairdressing skills.

“Mental health is a thing,” Olsson wrote on Facebook. “It affects people all around the world and of all ages. Parents – take it serious, don’t just push your kids off and tell them to get over something they legitimately can’t. A child should never feel so worthless to not even want to brush their hair.”

And Olsson’s message appeared to resonate with the online community. Soon, more than 207,000 people had reacted to the post and over 78,000 had shared it. Furthermore, many strangers reached out to tell the hairdresser that she was an “angel” for saving the girl’s hair.

Others, meanwhile, opened up about similar experiences they’d had. “It’s happened to me,” wrote one. “I suffer with bipolar and had an episode and didn’t brush my hair or take care of myself. Just remember, beautiful girl, you’re not on your own.”

However, modest Olsson saw nothing extraordinary about her actions. “I feel like she was put in my chair for a reason,” she told CBS News. And she added that seeing the teen smile again “was the best tip or amount I could have ever gotten.”