PANS Awareness Day - Awareness song release

One out of every 4 people will be touched by some type of mental ill health during the course of their life. For some families with children affected by PANDAS (or PANS) this situation is made worse by the lack of awareness over this horrendous condition.

PANDAS stands for Paediatric Auto-Immune Neuro-psychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcal Infection (And PANS – Paediatric Acute Onset Neuro-psychiatric Syndromes - the wider group of conditions which PANDAS is a part of).

Something as simple as a strep throat infection can cause children to lose many skills virtually overnight because antibodies to this most common infection virtually attacks the brain.

Due to lack of awareness, these children often get misdiagnosed as having a psychiatric illness when in reality, something as simple as routine antibiotic treatment can resolve all symptoms.

This condition is characterised by the sudden onset of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), tics (body jerking and repetitive movements), behavioural deterioration and eating disorders, like anorexia.

Parents and children become prisoners in their own homes with their youngsters being unable to leave their homes and children attempting to jump out of windows, thoughts of self-harm or wasting away before their parent’s eyes from severe eating restrictions (anorexia).

Kids as young as 8 years old, are being admitted to psychiatric units for long term stays because medics treating them do not recognise, or believe, that such behaviours may be down to the most common of infections.

PANDAS mum Aly Shields has this week released a single called ‘Warriors’ in honour of the many families suffering with this condition. We have asked radio stations all over the country to play this tune this week and tell the country that this condition exists and that much is going on in the background to raise awareness of this condition.  The song will be available to download from all the usual online sources.

PANS PANDAS UK is a charity, started by parents of children suffering with this condition. Its founder, Georgia Savory says ‘Our aim is to increase awareness of this horrible condition so that all doctors seeing a chid with these symptoms think, could this be PANS or PANDAS? We support families all over the UK dealing with this condition.’

In October 2017, we organised the first meeting of Doctors treating PANS and PANDAS, from all over the UK and so began the PANS Physicians Network who meet quarterly to make sure treatment of this group of children improves. For more information see www.panspandasuk.org