Functional neurological disorder in children and young people: Incidence, clinical features, and prognosis 2023 Yong, Stone et al

Authors include the Edinburgh Paediatric FND Study Group

Abstract

Aim

To report incidence, demographic and clinical characteristics, and symptom outcome of functional neurological disorder (FND) in children.

Method
Children diagnosed with FND at a regional children's hospital were prospectively recruited by weekly active surveillance for 36 months. Demographic, clinical, and follow-up data were retrospectively extracted by review of electronic records. Descriptive statistical analyses were used.

Results
Ninety-seven children (age range 5–15 years) met the case definition of FND (annual incidence 18.3 per 100 000 children). Children with FND were likely to be female (n = 68 [70%]) and older (median 13 years) with no difference in the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (marker of socioeconomic status) compared with the general childhood population. Functional motor (41%) and sensory (41%) symptoms were most common; other somatic symptoms such as headache (31%) and pain (27%) were frequent. Self-reported psychiatric symptoms and infection/inflammation were the most common predisposing and precipitating factors respectively. At a median of 15 months follow-up, 49% of 75 children reported improvement or resolution of FND symptoms with no prognostic factors found.

Interpretation
At this regional centre, FND in children had a higher incidence than previously reported and a less optimistic outcome than in some other studies.

Paywall, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dmcn.15538

 

So the authors are setting up (mainly) girls to not be treated for any health problems in future? And they are doing it really early in life to save money in future?

This kind of paper makes me feel sick. (Must be FND - sarcasm....)

 

Well, if about half of patients improve on their own, there go any claims about treatments, not that they ever had any basis. They never come anywhere close to this, it's time that is the main factor and that means something, very likely immunological. The big picture is so damn obvious here, but of course nothing will change anyway, just like nothing has changed with Long Covid being "treated" with rehabilitation, their own numbers from active treatments never even come close to half, if that's even a real number, given the poverty of assessment.

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that medicine cannot see anything wrong with people being ill for years. As if it's nothing, as if losing entire years of your life is no biggie, even less so because of an insane pseudoscientific ideology. It's at least as disruptive as wrongful imprisonment. As if people would just shrug at it if it happened to them.

That's really the gist here: if this happened to them and they were treated this way they would be furious, they treat people in a way they would never accept for themselves. That's always wrong.

 

So 13 years median and female.
Hormones rampant ,- cue mood swings , sleep shifts , changes in taste and eating habits - with the potential to not consume enough for factors to keep all the systems running smoothly , ( menopause in reverse) , growing pains ( issues with joints and tendons) - add in outside pressures and it's a wonder the FND diagnosis is not higher .
Endocrine system impacting immune system .....
Do people ever get it ?

 

The misogyny/narcissism/bigotry agenda continues it seems. I have an issue with papers that are just personal wordy manifestos to change culture being called ‘research’ inferring they are science like well.., science with regs and the rules of science like logic and deduction as well as induction (not properly done as a chosen sample and leading question or assessment looking only for certain things whether there or not etc).

at least if these things were termed right we could call them the movements, political whatever of agendas that they might turn out to be if the ‘what’ is the bit no one scrutinises (rather than just seen as ok because it’s ‘offering something’)