In the following two videos, these children went from being fun loving typical children to angry, frustrated, obsessive compulsive children. Some even with seizures, trancelike states and explosive violence. Some children may have other symptoms such as emotional lability, enuresis, anxiety, and deterioration in handwriting.
One family mentioned in this video discovered it was too much for them to handle when their daughter stabbed her mother in the eye while mom was driving the family home.
What would cause a child’s personality to change overnight? What would cause a child’s behavior to change from good to bad so quickly? Sometimes it’s trouble in the house or at school, sometimes it’s things they may have witnessed or experienced, but in this case it was PANDAS.
No, not the cute bears from the zoo, this is P.A.N.D.A.S, the abbreviation of Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal. The hypothesis being that some children may rapidly develop a change in behavior, extreme mood swings, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), tic disorders and / or Tourette syndrome like behaviors and that these symptoms are caused by group A beta-hemolytic streptococcal (GABHS) infections.
Note: the PANDAS hypothesis is controversial; whether it is a distinct entity differing from other cases of Tourette syndrome is debated among professionals.
How to treat PANDAS: Treatment for children diagnosed or suspected to have PANDAS is generally the same as the standard treatments for TS and OCD, including cognitive behavioral therapy and medications to treat OCD such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).
If your child goes through a change after getting strep throat, please bring them to a medical doctor and bring up the possibility of PANDAS to them.
There are also some controversial and experimental PANDAS treatments including prophylactic antibiotic treatments for tics and OCD. Some professionals caution that over diagnosis of PANDAS may lead to overuse of antibiotics to treat tics or OCD in the absence of active infection.
Remember, always consult medical professionals rather than acting on information from the internet or self-diagnosing yourself or anyone else.
Do you know someone who has a child has had a personality change? Please share this article with them.
Leave a Reply