OBJECTIVES Psychogenic gait is common in patients with medically unexplained neurological symptoms and provides significant challenges to healthcare providers. Clinicians may arrive at a correct diagnosis earlier if distinctive positive signs are identified and acknowledged. This study aims to offer a tool for identifying patterns of psychogenic gait based on positive signs in clinical settings...

INTRODUCTION Psychogenic dysphonia is a functional disorder with variable clinical manifestations. OBJECTIVE To assess the clinical and vocal characteristics of patients with psychogenic dysphonia in a case series. METHODS The study included 28 adult patients with psychogenic dysphonia, evaluated at a University hospital in the last ten years. Assessed variables included gender, age, occupa...

We describe the clinical features of 103 patients presenting with fixed dystonia and report the prospective assessment and investigation of 41 of them. Most patients were female (84%) and had a young age of onset [mean 29.7 (SD 13.1) years]. A peripheral injury preceded onset in 63% and spread of dystonia to other body regions occurred in 56%. After an average follow-up of 3.3 years (overall di...

A multidisciplinary expert review of key issues and future directions from the conference "Controversial labels and clinical uncertainties: psychogenic disorders, conversion disorder, and functional symptoms." On October 9 and 10, 2015, a conference entitled "Controversial labels and clinical uncertainties: psychogenic disorders, conversion disorder, and functional symptoms" was held at the Cen...

Somatization is the psychological mechanism whereby psychological distress is expressed in the form of physical symptoms. The psychological distress in somatization is most commonly caused by a mood disorder that threatens mental stability. Conversion disorder occurs when the somatic presentation involves any aspect of the central nervous system over which voluntary control is exercised. Conver...

This essay explores the inter-relationship between addiction to narcotics and dissociation. The focal premise is that drug use disorder, particularly opioid use disorder (OUD), is a condition driven by the need to chemically induce a state that mimics psychogenic dissociation. In other words, some individuals suffering from OUD are motivated to chemically induce a dissociative state to defend t...