Abstract:
Functional neurological disorder is a syndrome of medically unexplained neurological symptoms. In The Lancet Neurology, Mark Hallett and colleagues review some of the potential explanations for functional neurological disorder and the evidence that supports these explanations.
The paper by Hallett and colleagues, however, is more than a Review: it is also a territorial claim, seeking to expand the boundaries of what should be considered functional neurological disorder. The details of this claim are unlikely to be controversial to any clinician working in the field: the presentations Hallett and colleagues describe are not new, even if they do not fall within the current classifications of the disorder. But the claim is nonetheless remarkable, as even a decade ago it would have been thought to be sheer folly. A good argument could then have been made that functional neurological disorder (or conversion disorder, as it was more formally known) was the most stigmatised of all disorders, even compared with other unexplained syndromes. What would have been the point of expanding the scope of a diagnosis that patients went to such lengths to avoid?
The expansive mood in the Review by Hallett and colleagues therefore reflects a striking transformation in the status of functional neurological disorder. Functional neurological disorder has become a diagnosis that a neurologist might be comfortable to give, and that a patient might be glad to receive.
Source: Kanaan, RA . Functional neurological disorder and other unexplained syndromes. The Lancet- Neurology 21 (6):499-500. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(22)00095-3/fulltext