PANS, CANS, and Automobiles

The alarming symptoms of Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome - sudden tics, OCD, and regressions in both learning ability and behavior - can leave families stunned. Moreover, when educators and mental health professionals attempt to provide those families with desperately needed help, those providers may soon discover that tools useful for addressing those symptoms in the general population are ineffective for the youth who is battling PANS.


In this seminal work on PANS-related education, learning specialist, educator, and researcher Dr. Candelaria Greene PhD gives voice to the struggle that those extraordinary young people and families face. She offers a practical road map to assist those students through their unique academic challenges. 

 

Sprinkled with humor and poignant tones, Dr. Candelaria Greene provides an in-depth historical overview of PANS, followed by a discussion of how this multifaceted condition thwarts students' abilities both inside and outside of the classroom. She then reviews the processes and challenges of obtaining special education, accommodations, and other essential services, along with a detailed review of the ways in which laws in the United States support those essential interventions for students with PANS-related symptoms.

 

The calling card of PANS is one of jagged dysfunction in multiple areas - along with healing and recovered function over time. Those symptoms require that providers look beyond 'a one-size-fits-all approach' when treating the PANS-affected child or young adult. Accordingly, Dr. Candelaria Greene provides continuums of educational support that are unique to each student's circumstances. Moreover, she provides 'signposts' to help the practitioner and parent identify those educational and special educational practices that will be most effective in the educational care of students with PANS.

 

Finally, the book provides practical tools for providers and families alike through appendices that include a PANS check list, glossary, references, web resources, descriptors of OCD and tic disorders, and sample letters to initiate educational services.


Jamie Candelaria Greene PhD has served students with special needs from all ages and developmental levels. Her work as a teacher and professor of Special Education has spanned over thirty years and three continents. Dr. Candelaria Greene's research and writing has focused attention on effective educational practices, literacy, language acquisition, and especially, the effects of health conditions and the environment on learning ability. In addition to holding teaching credentials in Regular and Special Education (Preschool through Adult), she is a Board Certified Educational Therapist, as well as a Certificated Learning Specialist for the California Community College System. 

In her private practice, Dr. Candelaria Greene has provided educational assessments, academic support for adults re-entering education and readiness skills for children at risk.

In addition to her clinical practice, Dr. Candelaria Greene recently completed a two year tenure as a Visiting Scholar Researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, where she investigated the effects of PANS on learning; an evolving and passionate inquiry ignited by her own child's journey with the illness.


Keywords: PANDAS, PANS, Autoimmune, Disorder, Behavior, Sensory, OCD, Tics, Accommodations, Education