Talk:Psychosocial short stature

Inappropriate weight?

The article mentions, "weight that is inappropriate for the height"; does anyone know if this means too little weight, too much, or either? Dan 02:53, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Most likely too little.

"J.M. Barrie is a famous case" - does this mean that he suffered from it - no mention on his bio page; or that Peter Pan did? Peter Pan is not a good example since he's fictional.

See http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro01/web3/Munoz.html

An example in literature would be Oskar Matzerath, leading character from "The Tin Drum", by Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass.

Sources

I added a *secondary* source for the orphanage case:

Sapolsky, Robert M. Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: An Updated Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1998

I don't have the book myself, and cant find the primary source of that particular comparison (it may not have been written up in a medical journal) on PubMed. I did find this - a study of orphans in Eritrea

Wolff PH, Fesseha G.
"The orphans of Eritrea: a five-year follow-up study."
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 1999 Nov;40(8):1231-7.
PMID: 10604401 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=10604401&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.9.143.45 (talk) 16:12, 3 September 2007 (UTC) 

"J.M. Barrie is a famous case"

J.M. Barrie is a famous case. He was cited in aseason 1 episode of Radio Lab, a suffering from psychosocial dwarfism, due to bad parenting, neglect, and trauma. The ramafacation are reflected in his writting. Reading Barrie's bio-page is not a reasonable test to this, as we shouldn't use wiki as a source; however, Radio lab and their subsequent sources should suffice. -66.109.248.114 (talk) 08:22, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the paragraph citing Sapolsky as a source for the theory that J.M. Barrie suffered from PD, on the grounds that Sapolsky's work is not a reliable source on this subject. That goes for his book, his apperance on RadioLab, and especially the article published by Credit Suisse / First Boston. His account of Barrie is rife with errors: He misspells Barrie's name. He says that JMB witnessed his brother's death in the 1850s; JMB was born in 1860. He says JMB died at the age of 60; he died in 1937 (you can do the math). He says that the Barrie family were wealthy; the family were working textile weavers. He claims that an autopsy confirmed that JMB was pre-pubescent; numerous photos show a short-but-adult-height JMB with a bushy mustache. The only source for the anecdotes about JMB's childhood is a book written by JMB himself, a man in the business of exaggerating the truth. The common rumor that he was impotent (if true) has other plausible explanations. At best JMB is a possible PD case, but there is no credible evidence that suggests that this hypothesis is any more likely than "he was short, and he was emotionally distant to his wife". - JasonAQuest (talk) 23:50, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

"He was famously shorter than average (about five feet)" Barrie's 1934 passport states that he was 5 ft 3 1/2 inches - it can be seen in the database on jmbarrie.co.uk (http://www.jmbarrie.co.uk/database/?mode=imagesearch) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Laurenticwave (talk • contribs) 22:37, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Barrie has since been removed from the article altogether, a move I fully support. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 15:40, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Nomenclature

The term "psychogenic dwarfism" is almost unknown in the literature. PubMed returns no papers with that phrase. Ditto for the term "stress dwarfism". In the literature the syndrome is called "psychosocial dwarfism" (38 PubMed hits) or "psychosocial short stature" (17 PubMed hits), with "hyperphagic short stature" (4 PubMed hits) naming the syndrome subtype in which environmental stress inhibits growth despite adequate caloric intake by reversibly suppresses GH secretion. The WHO calls it "psychosocial short stature" (ICD-10 E34.3 [1]). We too should adopt the preferred term "psychogenic short stature," perhaps using the acronym PSS for brevity in the body of the article. Yappy2bhere (talk) 23:09, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

"Kaspar Hauser syndrome" is a neologism, coined by John Money in his book The Kaspar Hauser syndrome of "psychosocial dwarfism": deficient statural, intellectual, and social growth induced by child abuse [2]. Money himself usually names it "psychosocial dwarfism" (pp. 83, 92, 106) or "reversible somatotropin deficiency" (pp. 83, 84, 111), reserving "Kaspar Hauser syndrome" for his conclusion (pp. 19 [chapter title], 203, 204). I'm striking this term from the lead, but preserving the reference. Yappy2bhere (talk) 00:07, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm striking the reference, too. It's actually a book review in the NEJM, a tertiary source for a fringe opinion. Yappy2bhere (talk) 00:13, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Not great sources

Why these two cases? We do not tend to use case reports.

"

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."

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:42, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

References