Dec 21, 2023 01:52 AM
https://www.livescience.com/health/neuro...ic-illness
EXCERPTS: U.K. neurologist Dr. Suzanne O'Sullivan has spent her life treating psychosomatic illnesses, or disorders in which people suffer from debilitating physical symptoms that cannot be explained by a physical examination or medical investigation.
Psychosomatic illnesses may overlap with what are termed "functional disorders," though the latter may not have any psychological component. One example of psychosomatic illness are psychogenic nonepileptic seizures, in which a person experiences seizure-like attacks without the telltale explosion of electrical activity seen in the brains of people with epileptic seizures.
Medicine has a long and ignominious history with conditions for which they cannot find a physical cause, often dismissing them with sexist terms such as "hysteria." But that is a fundamental misunderstanding of how these very real illnesses manifest.
While many people with these conditions are told "it's all in your head," or dismissed as hypochondriacs, that's problematic, says O'Sullivan, a consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and the author of "The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness" (Pantheon, 2021).
As part of her work, O'Sullivan aims to reduce the stigma and clear up misunderstandings about psychosomatic illness. Live Science talked to O'Sullivan about why these conditions are so poorly understood, how they're diagnosed, and why treatments for them so often fail.
[...] EMILY COOKE: So, looking forward, you mentioned that this is a relatively newly-defined area of science, you talked about in the 21st century, what are the big emerging topics or unanswered questions that are facing the field right now?
SUZANNE O'SULLIVAN: I'd say in the last 20 years, scientists have really become interested in [psychosomatic illness] and the main focus of attention at the moment is really trying to understand these brain mechanisms.
And I think that's an enormously useful bit of research because the difficulty with patients — you can imagine if you were paralyzed and someone says "this is psychosomatic," the thing that will most help you move forward is if the doctor can say to you, "these are the brain mechanisms that are causing your paralysis." A real stumbling block for people is like, "how could stress possibly cause this?"
So a big focus for research now is mechanisms to help people understand what's happening to their bodies. But I would say that where we are really still making almost no progress is actually on treatment. We're still kind of using short courses of talking therapies and things that aren't terribly successful for these things... (MORE - the entire interview)
EXCERPTS: U.K. neurologist Dr. Suzanne O'Sullivan has spent her life treating psychosomatic illnesses, or disorders in which people suffer from debilitating physical symptoms that cannot be explained by a physical examination or medical investigation.
Psychosomatic illnesses may overlap with what are termed "functional disorders," though the latter may not have any psychological component. One example of psychosomatic illness are psychogenic nonepileptic seizures, in which a person experiences seizure-like attacks without the telltale explosion of electrical activity seen in the brains of people with epileptic seizures.
Medicine has a long and ignominious history with conditions for which they cannot find a physical cause, often dismissing them with sexist terms such as "hysteria." But that is a fundamental misunderstanding of how these very real illnesses manifest.
While many people with these conditions are told "it's all in your head," or dismissed as hypochondriacs, that's problematic, says O'Sullivan, a consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and the author of "The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness" (Pantheon, 2021).
As part of her work, O'Sullivan aims to reduce the stigma and clear up misunderstandings about psychosomatic illness. Live Science talked to O'Sullivan about why these conditions are so poorly understood, how they're diagnosed, and why treatments for them so often fail.
[...] EMILY COOKE: So, looking forward, you mentioned that this is a relatively newly-defined area of science, you talked about in the 21st century, what are the big emerging topics or unanswered questions that are facing the field right now?
SUZANNE O'SULLIVAN: I'd say in the last 20 years, scientists have really become interested in [psychosomatic illness] and the main focus of attention at the moment is really trying to understand these brain mechanisms.
And I think that's an enormously useful bit of research because the difficulty with patients — you can imagine if you were paralyzed and someone says "this is psychosomatic," the thing that will most help you move forward is if the doctor can say to you, "these are the brain mechanisms that are causing your paralysis." A real stumbling block for people is like, "how could stress possibly cause this?"
So a big focus for research now is mechanisms to help people understand what's happening to their bodies. But I would say that where we are really still making almost no progress is actually on treatment. We're still kind of using short courses of talking therapies and things that aren't terribly successful for these things... (MORE - the entire interview)