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Teen with Conversion Disorder

My daughter has been diagnosed with Conversion DIsorder and Major Depressive Disorder.  Background - Two incidents ( one being the death of her dog by being killed by coyottes and found and the other a near bike accident) have left my daughter for the last 1.5 years with "spells" that Dr's have labeled as conversion.  She received all the physical tests to rule out epilepsy, neurological issues.  They all came back normal.  Her spells were as many as 15 a day where she could go blind, deaf, paralyzed, confused, "amnesia" state where she is looking for her dog to about 1 or 2 a day.  She no longer goes into a spell where she is looking for her dog but does get the confused state where she talks in a childlike manner.  That tends to be her most common spell.  She also suffers from depression which seems to get worse due to her in ability to be "normal".  She is on Zoloft and abilify although the abilify we are convinced caused increased harmful thoughts and hallucinations.  My question - the school has an IEP but I tis a small school and there aren't many services.  They seem to want to put her in a behavioral school which is against anything I have seen with conversion disorder.  She has regular talk therapy.  I need help with the school to get them to keep her in the school setting. Any feedback?  I also would welcome any feedback from anyone that has had a loved one with conversion disorder and what helped them get better.


This discussion is related to teen conversion disorder?.
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Avatar universal
Wow I mean I have never personally heard of this kind of behavior.

I mean to be frank, I have known a lot of teenage girls who have experienced far worst than a dog dying, and nearly have an accident on a bike?

I would go as far as to say the symptoms personally seem to be bizarre, I have never really heard of those type of symptoms in reaction to some moderately upsetting events.

Definitely only a professional is going to be able to help with this, but if these sort of symptoms are persistent, it sounds very serious to me.
Helpful - 0
13167 tn?1327194124
Well,  this is just my opinion - I'm not in the medical field.

I believe Conversion disorder is a common symptom of severe anxiety.  It's a symptom,  in my opinion,  not really a "thing" by itself.  It is an outward manifestation of chronic anxiety.  And then when an incident happens,  like the dog being killed by coyotes,  that tipped her over until she could no longer handle her chronic anxiety and it "boiled over" into physical symptoms.  

Chronic anxiety can also be the cause of major depression - you might want to google "adrenal fatigue".

This may be  the case with your daughter (I don't know her - she may have in fact,  been very happy-go-lucky and at ease before her dog was killed.

If not - if she has a history of being an anxious child,  I would talk to her doctor about the possibility of treating her with anti-anxiety meds,  instead of meds for depression that can worsen anxiety.

Best wishes.  This must be very hard to watch.
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6300934 tn?1380688141
In order to give you the best feedback possible- may I ask how old your daughter is? :)
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