Psychiatric Correlates of Psychogenic Movement Disorder and Non-Epileptic Seizure

Objectives The objectives of this study are (1) to investigate the relationship between childhood abuse and dissociative experiences in both psychogenic movement disorders (PMD) and non-epileptic seizures (NES) and (2) to investigate the relationship between childhood abuse and both PMD and NES. The secondary objective of the study is to investigate if measures of response inhibition differ between PMD subjects compared to normal controls. This study is part of a larger study investigating the psychological and biological correlates of conversion disorder. Study population We intend to study adult patients with diagnoses of PMD seen by the Human Motor Control Section clinic or patients with diagnoses of NES seen by the Epilepsy clinic and normal controls. Design A psychiatric assessment, measurement scales and neuropsychological testing will be administered to the PMD and NES patients and normal controls. Outcome measures The first primary outcome measure will be the comparison of the different subtypes of childhood abuse (as measured by the Childhood Trauma Interview) and the severity of dissociation (as measured by the Dissociative Experiences Scale). The second primary outcome measure will be the comparison of frequencies of different subtypes of childhood abuse (as measured by the Childhood Trauma Interview) between PMD, NES and normal control groups. The secondary outcome measure will be the comparison of stop-signal reaction time as measured with the stop-signal task.