Personality Profiles Among People With Functional Motor Disorders 2025 Cucco et al

[Andy]

Abstract​

Objective:​

Although psychological issues are not diagnostic criteria for functional neurological disorder (FND), they often occur among individuals with FND, especially among those with functional seizures. However, corresponding findings for individuals with functional motor disorder (FMD) are inconclusive.

Methods:​

Thirty individuals with FMD and 30 age-, education-, and sex-matched healthy control (HC) individuals completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2. The authors used the test’s 10 basic clinical scales and its 15 content scales along with their subscales to explore the participants’ personality profiles. After logarithmic data transformation, parametric tests were performed to compare the two groups.

Results:​

Individuals with FMD had significantly higher scores than those in the HC group on the following basic clinical scales: hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria, psychopathic deviance, paranoia, psychasthenia, and schizophrenia (p<0.005). Compared with participants in the HC group, a higher proportion of those with FMD surpassed the cutoff score for the hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria, paranoia, and schizophrenia scales. Individuals with FMD showed a specific personality pattern, the “passive-aggressive valley,” characterized by high scores on the psychopathic deviance and paranoia scales and low scores on the masculinity-femininity scale. Individuals with FMD had higher scores than those in the HC group on anxiety, obsessiveness, depression, health concerns, low self-esteem, and work interference scales (p<0.003).

Conclusions:​

Individuals with FMD had significantly higher impairments in emotional-cognitive functioning compared with HC individuals, characterized by excessive attention to somatic sensations, poor emotional insight, and cognitive inflexibility, associated with personality features of susceptibility, misperception of threats, unexpressed anger, and behaviors indicating unmet emotional needs.

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[Trish]

This seems extremely judgemental. Have these questionnaires been properly validated on people with disabling chronic diseases? I'm guessing not.

 

[Utsikt]

This seems extremely judgemental. Have these questionnaires been properly validated on people with disabling chronic diseases? I'm guessing not.

It’s a test with 567 true/false questions that was originally developed in 1943.

https://psychtest.net/wp-content/uploads/MMPI-2-Test-Questions.pdf

It appears to be a favourite in the field of personality research, so I don’t think we have to take it very seriously..

 

[rvallee]

Although psychological issues are not diagnostic criteria for functional neurological disorder

What an odd thing to say. I guess pretending about bullshit like this makes it feel real, but I don't buy that they are that gullible, they're just parroting what gets easy funding and attention. It's literally constructed out of it, but pretending is part of the bullshit. Still, what an extremely odd thing to put down into writing.

hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria, psychopathic deviance, paranoia, psychasthenia, and schizophrenia

None of those things are personality profiles, or anything like it.

anxiety, obsessiveness, depression, health concerns, low self-esteem, and work interference scales

Neither are those. Button soup is soup made of a single button, and nothing else.

excessive attention to somatic sensations, poor emotional insight, and cognitive inflexibility, associated with personality features of susceptibility, misperception of threats, unexpressed anger, and behaviors indicating unmet emotional needs

Every single one of those is a normal consequence of illness, and plain factual, in the case of unmet emotional needs. They're basically pretending to "find" things we literally tell them about, but they don't care about any of it, just what's in it for them. Or it's wrong, in the case of misperception of threats. They don't even realize they are predatory to us, so they can't view the threat they represent for what it is. Incredible.

They really don't have a clue about illness, so much that they literally invent fake mental illnesses to account for it. They only ever know disease, illness is as total a mystery to them as to the very first physician. We are oddly in the best and the worst period in the history of medicine, at the same time, and for mutually exclusive reasons: the best comes out of science, the worst is this junk. But they're obsessed with the worst, and have mostly given up on the best.

 

[Utsikt]

They really don't have a clue about illness, so much that they literally invent fake mental illnesses to account for it. They only ever know disease, illness is as total a mystery to them as to the very first physician. We are oddly in the best and the worst period in the history of medicine, at the same time, and for mutually exclusive reasons: the best comes out of science, the worst is this junk. But they're obsessed with the worst, and have mostly given up on the best.

It feels like some kind of twisted version of the Stanford prison experiment.

«I wonder what happens if we gaslight and abuse patients for decades, and then try to blame it on what we tell them are their own character flaws.»

 

[Sean]

«I wonder what happens if we gaslight and abuse patients for decades, and then try to blame it on what we tell them are their own character flaws.»

And then also attribute the consequences of imposing that additional burden and insult to their underlying 'psychological and moral pathology'.

Above all else, it is never the expert's fault.

 

[bobbler]

I heard the other day that Parkinson's was due to become one of the illnesses with the biggest prevalence and was fastest growing recently and couldn't help but think this sort of thing explained potentially the 'sudden interest' from the psychosomatic industry in creating things like FMD

I don't think that is cynical to point out that a 'differential diagnosis' /research looking for material that would undermine certain segments from being 'deserving of treatment/taken seriously' etc. has suddenly been the focus of some just at the time when the likelihood of these diseases is going from rare to not rare, so early detection from eg neurology and proper respectful treatment and accurate diagnoses would/should be the focus?

the old 'note on the file' playbook ? but just now as that is/should be becoming something that doesn't hold people are starting to do dodgy research to supposedly muddy the waters that it isn't just inaccurate or spite or uncalled for by claiming there are now apparently surveys for someone who puts such suggestions on? but that really they seem to never have to draw lines to connect dots just ‘allude to them’ and show they have anything to do with the price of eggs ie mean anyone who scores on this aren't just as likely to be ill and deserving and normal as the next person?

SO I checked it was the case and Parkinsons UK has: https://www.parkinsons.org.uk/news/global-cases-parkinsons-predicted-rise-25-million-2050

A study predicting health trends worldwide suggests that incidence of Parkinson’s is rising due to an ageing population.
The number of people living with Parkinson’s by 2050 could more than double compared to numbers in 2021, according to a study published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

Parkinson’s is the fastest growing neurological condition, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about its causes. There’s also a big gap in our knowledge about how global healthcare systems, race and ethnicity, and environment might affect the prevalence of Parkinson’s.

The BMJ article is: https://www.bmj.com/content/388/bmj-2024-080952

which includes the following in the conclusion of the abstract

By 2050 Parkinson’s disease will have become a greater public health challenge for patients, their families, care givers, communities, and society. The upward trend is expected to be more pronounced among countries with middle Socio-demographic Index, in the Global Burden of Disease East Asia region, and among men.

and in the introduction

Parkinson’s disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease in the world.1 The World Health Organization has estimated that neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease will become the second leading cause of death worldwide by 2040, surpassing cancer related deaths.2

And it has obviously been on the radar for a while since the following 2018 paper came up on the google search: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6311367/ which is titled

The Emerging Evidence of the Parkinson Pandemic​

and the abstract says:

Neurological disorders are now the leading source of disability globally, and the fastest growing neurological disorder in the world is Parkinson disease. From 1990 to 2015, the number of people with Parkinson disease doubled to over 6 million. Driven principally by aging, this number is projected to double again to over 12 million by 2040. Additional factors, including increasing longevity, declining smoking rates, and increasing industrialization, could raise the burden to over 17 million. For most of human history, Parkinson has been a rare disorder. However, demography and the by-products of industrialization have now created a Parkinson pandemic that will require heightened activism, focused planning, and novel approaches.

 

[bobbler]

Abstract​

Objective:​

Although psychological issues are not diagnostic criteria for functional neurological disorder (FND), they often occur among individuals with FND, especially among those with functional seizures. However, corresponding findings for individuals with functional motor disorder (FMD) are inconclusive.

Methods:​

Thirty individuals with FMD and 30 age-, education-, and sex-matched healthy control (HC) individuals completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2. The authors used the test’s 10 basic clinical scales and its 15 content scales along with their subscales to explore the participants’ personality profiles. After logarithmic data transformation, parametric tests were performed to compare the two groups.

Results:​

Individuals with FMD had significantly higher scores than those in the HC group on the following basic clinical scales: hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria, psychopathic deviance, paranoia, psychasthenia, and schizophrenia (p<0.005). Compared with participants in the HC group, a higher proportion of those with FMD surpassed the cutoff score for the hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria, paranoia, and schizophrenia scales. Individuals with FMD showed a specific personality pattern, the “passive-aggressive valley,” characterized by high scores on the psychopathic deviance and paranoia scales and low scores on the masculinity-femininity scale. Individuals with FMD had higher scores than those in the HC group on anxiety, obsessiveness, depression, health concerns, low self-esteem, and work interference scales (p<0.003).

Conclusions:​

Individuals with FMD had significantly higher impairments in emotional-cognitive functioning compared with HC individuals, characterized by excessive attention to somatic sensations, poor emotional insight, and cognitive inflexibility, associated with personality features of susceptibility, misperception of threats, unexpressed anger, and behaviors indicating unmet emotional needs.

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the masculinity-feminity scale idea seem a bit weird

apparently

The masculinity-femininity scale measures an individual's self-concept regarding their own adoption, preference, and identity of masculine and feminine traits. Someone who gets a low score on the masculinity part of the scale would see themselves as having very few traditionally masculine traits, and a low score on the femininity part of the scale would mean they identify with very few traditionally feminine traits.

what has someone's self-concept of their gender got to do with anything I wonder?

Or is this just plain as day another methodology fishing out 'what words do certain demographics tend to use when they go to an HCP to describe symptoms' and seeing if they can turn words used by certain sociodemographics into dog whistles for HCPs to send those individuals off to the pseudo-medicine pile?

 

[Snow Leopard]

These studies are meaningless without population based cohorts, the results also reflect participation/referral biases.

 

[Sean]

I think studies like this are inherently scientifically meaningless. They are rigged from the start by the underlying assumptions about 'personality' and its causal role.

The whole field is dangerous junk.

 

[rvallee]

I think studies like this are inherently scientifically meaningless. They are rigged from the start by the underlying assumptions about 'personality' and its causal role.

The whole field is dangerous junk.

But, really, when have you stopped beating your wife, senator?