‘Outgoing’ 9-Year-Old Changes ‘Overnight’ into Angry Person Parents Don’t Recognize. Then Gets a Shocking Diagnosis (Exclusive)

In the spring of 2023, Crystal Loos began noticing that her daughter wasn’t acting like her normal self. Her once bubbly elementary schooler seemed distracted and pulled away from school, her friends and the world.

The Illinois mother of three tells PEOPLE that her daughter, Lacy Mae, stopped eating foods that she used to enjoy, and, at the time, Loos thought it was depression and anxiety.

“Before this, she was the happiest, funniest, most outgoing child ever. She never had any issues,” Loos, 30, shares.

Then, in July 2024, there was a “complete overnight change,” and the then-9-year-old was no longer “herself.”

While Lacy Mae was diagnosed with anxiety and depression, Loos knew deep down it was something else.

“They tried to put her on SSRIs, they tried to get her into a psychiatrist, psychologist, everything,” she says. “But I just felt that there was something deeper going on.”

“The night in July came, and it was like she had a psychotic break that night, and she was banging on my door. She was begging to go to the hospital,” Loos continues. “She knew something was wrong, but she didn’t know what, because she couldn’t even explain to me what was going on. It was just like she didn’t have control over her brain.”

Loos describes a period of time where her young daughter wouldn’t sleep, felt paranoid and constantly begged to be taken to the hospital to figure out what was wrong with her.

“It was utter terror, like she wasn’t herself. She had dilated pupils. You looked at her, and she just wasn’t the same kid, like, it was like something took over her,” Loos says.

Although they “had gone to multiple hospitals,” nearly everyone agreed that it was just depression and anxiety.

At that point, Loos’ daughter begged to be admitted to a psych ward.

“She’s 10 years old, so that’s crazy, obviously, but she just wanted her health to get fixed,” Loos says. “She begged, begged, begged to be admitted. She was, at this point, suicidal.”

“We had to sometimes hold her down because she was trying to hurt herself or us. Sometimes we would have to lock her and us in a room together so that she wouldn’t. She was more of a danger to herself than us,” she shares.

Loos, who was recently postpartum when Lacy Mae’s health took a turn, says her parents then stepped in to help.

“Eventually, she did have to move in with my parents because I had a newborn baby, and then I also have a 5-year-old, and my 5-year-old was just terrified of her,” she says. “He was just absolutely terrified because she was screaming. Rage is what I could describe her. She had so much rage in her.”

Loos’ daughter refused to eat, refused to go to school, and ended up missing most of fourth grade. While many people believed the new baby could have caused Lacy Mae’s personality change, Loos noted that it was much deeper than that.

“I’m like, ‘You guys don’t get it. She was running away from home. She was trying to jump out of moving cars, like just complete psychosis.’ It was nothing like I’ve ever seen before. Especially as a child and in my childhood, I never had any issues before this,” she shares.

Eventually, Lacy Mae was admitted to a behavioral health unit. During that time, Loos turned to various Facebook mom groups for support, asking if anyone else had ever experienced something similar. A few people mentioned that it could be PANS/PANDAS, so Loos got to work researching.

“I went to the psychiatrist at the children’s hospital, and I literally begged. I was bawling at him. I said, ‘She has something wrong with her. I think this is what it is: PANS /PANDAS. Can we do any further workup?’ They refused to do that.”

According to the Stanford University School of Medicine, Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS) is a clinical diagnosis for children who “have a dramatic – sometimes overnight – onset of neuropsychiatric symptoms” characterized by the sudden onset of obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCD) or eating restrictions. They may also have symptoms of depression, behavioral regression, irritability, anxiety, sleep issues, and difficulty with schoolwork.

Meanwhile, Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections (PANDAS) is a subset of PANS, and has five distinct criteria for diagnosis, including “abrupt ‘overnight’ OCD or dramatic, disabling tics; a relapsing-remitting, episodic symptom course; young age at onset (average of 6–7 years); presence of neurologic abnormalities;” and a recent streptococcal infection, such as strep throat, peri-anal strep or scarlet fever, per the PANDAS Physicains Network.

There isn’t an official test to diagnose PANS/PANDAS, making it hard for medical professionals to determine it as the root cause of symptoms.

So, Loos took her daughter out of the psych ward and searched for a doctor who specialized in PANS/PANDAS. They eventually contacted Indiana-based specialist Dr. Antoine, and in September 2024, after in-depth blood work, Lacy Mae was officially diagnosed.

She was put on antibiotics and received IVIG (Intravenous Immunoglobulin) to help her immune system.

“She had different infections in her body that were mistakenly attacking her brain. She had several different infections,” Loos shares. “She had a tick-borne illness. She had mycoplasma, plasma pneumonia, and these are all things that Dr. Antoine checked for. That’s how we figured out what was going on.”

“He put her on antibiotics to kill these infections, and then he put her on antibiotics to regulate her immune system, and then the IVIG, that’s also to regulate the immune system, and then different supplements just to get her immune system back to normal so that it attacks the infection rather than attacking her brain,” Loos adds.

Slowly, treatment began to work, and by December of 2024, Loos says they started to “see her again.”

While Loos admits the tween “still had a lot of episodes after that,” the severity of those episodes decreased.

“I was having just so much anxiety through all this because I was like, I don’t know what to do,” she shares. “I can’t even describe how bad it was. It was literally like a living hell.”

Lacy Mae was also put on an anti-psychotic to help calm her down, and now, just over one year after her diagnosis, Loos says the 10-year-old is “99%” herself again.

“She does have some setbacks and a little bit of anxiety here and there, but for the most part, ever since we found Dr. Antoine and got on the right medication, she has been thriving, and life is pretty much back to normal for the most part,” Loos says. “She goes to school. She plays sports. She plays with her friends, which she hasn’t done for a while. Now she’s completely back to living life and enjoying life again.”

Loos recently shared a TikTok video showing the difference in her daughter to raise awareness of PANS/PANDAS. The video went viral, amassing over 45 million views.

She says that parents have since reached out to share their own stories about how their children changed seemingly without cause. She’s been able to connect them with resources and talk them through what they’re feeling.

“I want parents to get answers. I want them to know that this is a thing and something to look into if your child has similar symptoms. I wish I would have found it sooner, before our life got really hard with it,” she tells PEOPLE. “It’s really amazing, because I’ve gotten so many messages and people, saying the kindest things and that they’ve been through it, and they know how it feels, and they’re so grateful that I’m spreading awareness.”

“When we were going through this, I was really struggling because I didn’t feel like I could find other parents that were dealing with this,” she continues. “It’s very, very lonely, and you want to find any information you can, and there’s just not a lot out there.”

Loos wants to educate people on PANS/PANDAS since it’s a diagnosis that “is not widely known.”

“Although I think it’s honestly not a rare diagnosis. It’s more common than we think,” she adds. “I think it’s just often misdiagnosed as other things. I just want people to be aware of what everyone’s going through when they have PANS/PANDAs.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health challenges, emotional distress, substance use problems, or just needs to talk, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org 24/7.