Risk Factors
Most PNES patients (75%) are women, with onset in the late teens to early twenties being typical. PNES patients often have a history of multiple vague, unexplained medical problems and may have a psychiatric condition such as major depressive disorder or an anxiety disorder or bipolar disorder. A number of researchers have identified abnormal personality traits or personality disorders in patients with PNES such as borderline personality. The presence of these personality disorders, often related to a trauma in childhood, has led to researchers postulating that PNES may be an expression of repressed psychological harm in response to trauma such as child abuse. Over-emphasising these theories to patients may lead to false memory syndrome so they should be introduced delicately. Other traumatic experiences such as bullying in adulthood, learning disabilities, sexual abuse or adverse family dynamics may also be important pre-disposing or maintaining factors.
Read more about this topic: Hystero-epilepsy
Famous quotes containing the words risk and/or factors:
“The risk for a woman who considers her helpless children her “job” is that the children’s growth toward self-sufficiency may be experienced as a refutation of the mother’s indispensability, and she may unconsciously sabotage their growth as a result.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“Language makes it possible for a child to incorporate his parents’ verbal prohibitions, to make them part of himself....We don’t speak of a conscience yet in the child who is just acquiring language, but we can see very clearly how language plays an indispensable role in the formation of conscience. In fact, the moral achievement of man, the whole complex of factors that go into the organization of conscience is very largely based upon language.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)