Review Hypnosis and suggestion as interventions for functional neurological disorder: A systematic review 2023 Connors et al

Highlights

• Studies were identified across the last century involving 1584 participants.
  
  
• >85% of patients demonstrated clinically significant improvements.
  
  
• >75% had a resolution or near resolution of symptoms in the short-term.
  
  
• The evidence base shared limitations with that for other interventions in FND.
  
  
• Further research is warranted given the promising findings.

Abstract

Objective
Functional neurological disorder (FND) involves the presence of neurological symptoms that cannot be explained by neurological disease. FND has long been linked to hypnosis and suggestion, both of which have been used as treatments. Given ongoing interest, this review examined evidence for the efficacy of hypnosis and suggestion as treatment interventions for FND.

Method
A systematic search of bibliographic databases was conducted to identify group studies published over the last hundred years. No restrictions were placed on study design, language, or clinical setting. Two reviewers independently assessed papers for inclusion, extracted data, and rated study quality.

Results
The search identified 35 studies, including 5 randomised controlled trials, 2 non-randomised trials, and 28 pre-post studies. Of 1584 patients receiving either intervention, 1379 (87%) showed significant improvements, including many who demonstrated resolution of their symptoms in the short-term. Given the heterogeneity of interventions and limitations in study quality overall, more formal quantitative synthesis was not possible.

Conclusions
The findings highlight longstanding and ongoing interest in using hypnosis and suggestion as interventions for FND. While the findings appear promising, limitations in the evidence base, reflecting limitations in FND research more broadly, prevent definitive recommendations. Further research seems warranted given these supportive findings.

Open access, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163834323002074

 

Yet more evidence that the entire paradigm of evidence-based medicine is garbage. In most of the studies, everyone is reported to have improved. Whether it's true or not, this is what they reported, because they can't properly assess any of this. It's all completely arbitrary. In some cases, it's the clinicians' assessment only. In the 2 "best" studies, clinicians watched videos of the patients to make their assessment. Holy hell.

Also notable, whew are there many of those trials in the last 20 years. 2, which seem to be from the same researchers, were rated as strong quality. Open label trials without controls that are heavily biased using something widely known to be quackery as treatment. Strong quality. Good grief, words mean nothing in this discipline.

They actually note that, oddly enough to them, the reported rates of improvement here are far higher than in the current standard of care comprising of physiotherapy, psychotherapy and "mind-body" woo explanations. LMAO.

Well, this is a doozy of a review, and on a day when there is another one about mood-oriented whatever of whatever. The hits keep on coming from the new age cult of EBM.

And meanwhile it is the current standard to demand studies using this paradigm to "prove" that masks and respirators, which rely on physics and engineering, are effective at preventing respiratory diseases. Even though they are and have been used for decades in health care settings and many other contexts where air filtration is critical to survival. It's absolute madness to replace science with pseudoscience on a completely voluntary basis. And yet here we are.

 

Surely someone needs to stop money either directly being spent or indirectly via those who are tenured being allowed to spend paid time on things that are merely pushing 'the new propaganda' of pretend science to back up bigotries.

I half-expected when reading this that the issue would be that people were being hypnotised to be forced to say what the investigator wanted to hear, with of course no objective measure being reported to see if they were getting more disabled whilst being forced to say they felt like a new person.

But instead it's nonsense claiming a disease that has recently been invented has been investigated by looking at studies going back the last hundred years? And says it all that research design doesn't matter.

It's just a pretend subject area trying to pretend that people who think forcing disabled people to fake it until they make it - because it makes their life easier to just be in denial and pretend 'the problem doesn't exist' if you can coerce/force the vulnerable person in front of you to 'say it out loud' - isn't mad delusion that is harmful.

The idea that people in this area are 'trying to help' needs to begin to be called out very strongly.

 

Well they couldn't start with the traditional "You are feeling sleepy ..."