Slater revisited: 6 year follow up study of patients with medically unexplained motor symptoms

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Somatoform Disorders

“…Symptoms may remit within a few weeks of an initial episode and they may recur in the future. Some research indicates that a brief duration of symptoms prior to treatment is associated a better prognosis (Crimlisk et al, 1998;Hafeiz, 1980;Ron, 2001). …”

“…Nevertheless, there is some evidence that conversion disorder is more common among women (Deveci et al, 2007;Faravelli et al, 1997), non-whites (Stefansson, et al, 1979), and individuals from lower socioeconomic classes (Folks, Ford, & Regan, 1984;Stefansson, et al, 1979). Co-morbid psychiatric distress in patients with pseudo-neurological symptoms is high; it has been estimated that 30% to 90% of patients seeking treatment for pseudo-neurological symptoms also meet criteria for at least one other psychiatric disorder, typically somatoform disorders, affective disorders, anxiety disorders, or personality disorders (Binzer, Andersen, & Kullgren, 1997;Crimlisk et al, 1998;Mokleby, Akyuz, Kundakel, Kizitlan & Dogan, 2002;Sar et al, 2004). A co-morbid personality disorder diagnosis has been found to indicate poor prognosis of conversion disorder (Mace & Trimble, 1996).…”

Medically unexplained visual loss in adult patients

“…Other studies have shown that patients with medically unexplained symptoms rarely turn out to have organic pathology. 5,8 In our series, one patient in the bilateral visual loss group, with concentric contraction of Goldmann visual fields, was subsequently diagnosed as having Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's disease may present with visual field loss 13 and more commonly field defects are recognised during the course of the disease.…”

“…But, in common with other authors [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] we prefer the term 'medically unexplained symptoms' (in this case 'visual loss'), because it is free from aetiological assumptions and does not preclude the possibility of some undetected organic pathology.…”

Streamlined Classification of Psychopathological Hand Disorders: A Literature Review

“…Conversion disorder patients quite commonly have bilateral symptoms [16,68,78]. In unilateral conversion disorders, studies have seemingly shown a more common prevalence of left-sided symptoms [27,78,83].…”