Objective: To compare the trauma histories and psychopathological comorbidities in patients with functional (psychogenic) movements disorders (FMD) to patients with psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES).

Background: Functional neurological disorders represent challenging and common diagnoses, representing an estimated 10-33% of patients seen in outpatient neurology clinics. The differences accounting for specific functional phenotypes remains unclear.

Methods: In this ongoing prospective study, 49 patients with clinically definite FMD, 23 patients with PNES documented by video-EEG, and 48 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HCs) were evaluated for history of trauma using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) and Traumatic Life Events Questionnaire (TLEQ). Participants were screened for psychiatric diagnoses using a structured clinical interview (SCID, Version IV-TR), and personality traits were assessed using the NEO PI-R. Measures were transformed to achieve approximately normal distributions, and ANOVA was used to compare groups.

Results: Patients with PNES reported greater childhood trauma (p=0.011) and greater lifetime traumatic events (p=0.018) than patients with FMD and HCs. Paradoxically, both FMD and PNES patients reported decreased fear experienced during traumatic life events as compared to HCs (p = 0.008). Both patient groups demonstrated increased neuroticism as compared to HCs (p < 0.001).

Conclusions: Psychosocial risk factors, including childhood and lifetime trauma history, differ significantly between FMD and PNES patients, suggesting that the mechanism for disease pathogenesis may differ for different functional neurological phenotypes.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/comparing-psychosocial-risk-factors-in-patients-with-functional-movement-disorders-and-patients-with-psychogenic-non-epileptic-seizures/