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Mental Health Perspectives guest columnist

A few weeks after my 6th birthday, I went to bed one night a happy, healthy child, and I woke up the next morning riddled with anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), tics, and a laundry list of psychiatric symptoms I’d never experienced before. I couldn’t sit still for more than a few seconds without moving my body; I could barely write my own name, and I was so afraid of choking that I couldn’t even swallow my own saliva. I saw doctors, therapists, psychiatrists and behavior specialists, and none of them could provide a diagnosis, other than “anxiety.”

I did have anxiety. I cried most of the day because the entire world felt like it was crashing down on me. But there was something else.

I had PANDAS: Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcal infections. PANDAS and its sister diagnosis PANS (Post-infectious Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Syndrome) are infection-mediated neuropsychiatric disorders. That means that when an infection develops in the body, the immune system sends a misdirected immune response to the brain. It causes inflammation in the areas of the brain responsible for emotions, behavior, sleep and impulse control. (See link for article)

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**Comment**

While PANDAS is associated with strep, PANS includes tick-borne illness infections.  One Lyme literate doctor in Wisconsin has stated that 80% of his PANS patients have Lyme/MSIDS. 

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