Parker Barnes suffered from vocal tics, mood swings, OCD, speech regression, psychosis, hallucinations, depression, deterioration in school performance and handwriting, restrictive eating, and anxiety following multiple bouts of strep throat. Cunningham Panel™ test results helped clinicians determine appropriate treatments.

Parker Barnes’ parents describe their son as a reliable, popular, easygoing kid until he got strep throat at age 10. Within days he became debilitated by severe psychiatric and neurologic symptoms. “His immune system launched a campaign against his brain and within a matter of months he dropped into a psychosis,” says Parker’s dad, Brian.

After visiting more than a dozen specialists, Parker Barnes and his mother travel across country to see pediatric neurologist Dr. Beth Latimer. A young girl is hospitalized and fed through a tube after she stops eating, afraid to swallow her own saliva.

Nightline takes an in-depth look at three children in crisis who were stricken with Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcal infections (PANDAS) and fighting to regain their lives. Home videos show children engaging in frightening and disturbing behaviors. Parents say their children’s personalities changed seemingly overnight.