Struggling with Mental Health Diagnosis

i understand your pain:( i was going through this exact thing before i got diagnosed w PANDAS. i think pursuing a dx of PANS/PANDAS is a great idea bc not only do you have hope in that it’s treatable but it was also a SUPER validating diagnosis for me and so many others. ps: if you think you might have PANDAS, i would look into seeing if you might also have lyme disease and/or CIRS bc they’re very common among people with PANDAS and they’re both treatable and so many ppl have gone into full remission after treatment. the lyme tests most drs use are not great so if you can afford it, i recommend getting the more private tests. good luck and i hope you find answers!

It could be pans instead of pandas because pandas is because of a strep infection were pans could be a number of things

I get that tbh. I've had autism and ADHD traits my entire life but when I was in middle school suddenly I had severe social anxiety and OCD out of nowhere. My freshman year of high school I started having panic attacks at school almost every day. Since then my health has just been steadily declining. When I found out about PANS/PANDAS via Evie Meg (thistrippyhippie) I looked into it just because I wanted to broaden my mind and be aware of what she was going through and realized I have a LOT of symptoms and meet the criteria for a diagnosis. Since then I've been trying to research as much as possible to make sure that I'm not coming to the wrong conclusion. It's hard not knowing why you feel sick all the time and not having any answers, so I 100% understand how you feel.

Did you have a strep infection around the time you started showing traits?