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teen conversion disorder?

My 13 year old daughter is suffering from , what her drs believe, conversion disorder. To give some background, she had a rough and somewhat stressful year last year. She was a gymnast of 6 years, on the competitive level 7 team, and had to quit because of an injury that took her out of practice for a month. Then her knee pain from an "old" gymnastics injury came back and she was told she'd need to stop her tumbling class, her dance class, and would need surgery. She had the surgery on Sept 6th 2010. During all of this, a conflict was brewing between my daughter and one of her best friends. This conflict spiraled out of control , with the other girls mother getting involved and with texts and facebook posts making it all worse. This girl began bullying my daughter and getting other kids involved in making fun of her. On October 21st, the girl made a threat to my daughter during lunch. 2 weeks after the threat, she bagan having anxiety attacks. These attacks were severe, with seizure-like jerking, sometimes hyperventilating, sometimes not able to breathe at all. We took her to a counselor and a psychiatrist and she was put on Prozac 20mg. For 10 days , her attacks (that had been several a day) stopped and we felt she was free of it all. Then all of a sudden, she began having "passing out" episodes. It looks like she's passed out, but she's completely aware and can hear everything that's going on, she just can't move or respond verbally. Sometimes she will open her eyes, but still can't move or talk for a while. Her pediatrician sent her for an MRI with contrast of the brain, it was clear. Then he sent her to a neurologist that admitted her into the hospital for and overnight EEG with camera monitoring. Seizures were ruled out. Her psychiatrist believes we're dealing with conversion disorder. She is still on Prozac, but it's now 40 mg and we have an appt with her counselor next week. should we just trust this diagnosis? Or go somewhere for a 2nd opinion?
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242606 tn?1243782648
MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL
Conversion Disorder (which is a type of Somatoform Disorder) can be difficult to diagnose. Certainly your daughter's condition meets the criteria for a Conversion Disorder, but it always makes sense to obtain a second opinion because you don't want to assume that something is psychological in nature when a medical condition (in this case a neurological condiiton) is responsible for the symptoms. The diagnostic work that has been accomplished is very reasonable. But second opinions are prudent in such instances.
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Avatar universal
A related discussion, Teen with Conversion Disorder was started.
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