Cases
One case was a child who was admitted to a hospital with an extremely low weight. One nurse took over his care and he began to rapidly gain weight and his growth hormone levels increased during this time. The child was so dependent on the nurse emotionally that when she left, his levels returned to what they had been when he was admitted to the hospital, and once she returned, they stabilized once more.
When a police raid in 1987 released the children held by an Australian cult known as The Family, one twelve year old girl weighed under 20 kg (44 lbs) and was under 120 cm (4 ft) tall. She grew 11 cm (4 in) in the following year and her growth hormone levels returned to normal.
Writer J. M. Barrie has been speculated to have experienced PSS. His brother died when Barrie was six years old, and their mother – mourning the loss of her favorite child – neglected him for a time afterward. He was famously shorter than average (5 ft 3½ in. according to his 1934 passport), and his marriage was reportedly never consummated, prompting speculation that he was in some ways physically immature. He is most famous for his story of Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up.
Read more about this topic: Psychosocial Short Stature
Famous quotes containing the word cases:
“We noticed several other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by its yellow sand-banks, though the river itself is for the most part invisible. Lawsuits, as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these causes. Railroads have been made through certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms into deserts, and the company has had to pay the damages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... in all cases of monstrosity at birth anaesthetics should be applied by doctors publicly appointed for that purpose... Every successive year would see fewer of the unfit born, and finally none. But, it may be urged, this is legalized infanticide. Assuredly it is; and it is urgently needed.”
—Tennessee Claflin (1846–1923)