Beth Alison Maloney is the de facto national attorney advocate for the recognition and treatment of PANDAS/PANS, a voluntary role she assumed after her son suffered severe mental illness as a result of an undiagnosed strep infection. Harnessing her skills and contacts gained from working in the entertainment industry, she pushed recognition of his disorder forward starting with the publication of her memoir Saving Sammy. Sold to Random House in a bidding war, it propelled the disorder to national attention when she appeared on the Today Show with her fully recovered son Sammy. Seeking to further empower parents, she wrote Childhood Interrupted (2013). It is the one and only resource guide about the disorder, which is called PANDAS/PANS. In 2015, she was named by the Wall Street Journal in “5 Things to Know About PANS.” She championed the 2016 documentary “My Kid Is Not Crazy.” In 2019, she created the relationships that have led to establishing PANDAS/PANS clinics at the University of Arkansas and UCLA. In 2021, she was nominated for the Catchers in the Rye Humanitarian Award from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. With scores of television appearances, articles, broadcast interviews, worldwide speaking engagements, and meetings with medical deans and physicians, her work as a catalyst for change in this area of medicine is inspiring.
Beth Maloney’s legal experience encompasses representation of clients in the fields of business, entertainment, medicine, and child protection law.
Her wealth of legal experience includes representing writers, directors, and producers on feature film, television, and documentary projects. She had day to day legal responsibilities for The Tonight Show for many years. As a studio VP of legal affairs she was responsible for motion picture and television projects, supervised outside counsel (including litigation), and closed multi-million dollar financing deals. She has served as co-executive producer/co-producer on three films.
In recent years, she has turned her legal focus to abuses by the child protection system. She is an effective courtroom advocate, having made 1000+ court appearances in such matters before courts in Maine and Massachusetts. She has gained national recognition in the cutting edge area of “medical kidnapping” cases, when the government attempts to remove children from their parents due to disagreements among physicians over medical conditions. She consults nationwide on cases involving children with complex medical conditions.
Ms. Maloney’s media appearances and interviews include the Today Show, The Doctors, Mystery Diagnosis, W5, the Glenn Beck Show, Fox News LA, Good Morning LA, 207, AM Northwest, Fox Q13 Seattle, GMA Health, the Bonnie Hunt Show, Sirius XM’s Doctor Radio, various Public Radio stations, internet and podcast programs, multiple articles in print and online including The Boston Globe.
Presentations before national medical/research and parent conferences include the University of California at Irvine, the International Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Foundation, the Northeast PANS/PANDAS Conference, PANDAS Ireland, PANDAS Canada, Autism One and Pediatric Advocacy and Research Initiative.
Ms. Maloney has been called upon to consult as a patient and mental health advocate with parents and physicians across the country. A relentless advocate and groundbreaker, Ms. Maloney was the first to compile a PANDAS/PANS database of treating physicians and launch a network of support groups that currently meet nationwide.
“Saving Sammy is about my two-year struggle to obtain the correct diagnosis and treatment for my son Sammy when he contracted obsessive-compulsive disorder through a strep infection (PANDAS). Published by Random House on September 22, 2009, this is the first book ever written about the disorder. The lives of thousands of sick children have been changed by my relentless efforts focusing public and medical attention on recognizing and treating this previously obscure disorder. And that is exactly why I wrote this book.”
– Beth Maloney
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