Five years ago, at the Northeast Regional Epilepsy Group, we took a leap into the unknown and organized our first ever PNES conference for patient and caregivers. Just days before the conference was to take place, we were understandably nervous. We wondered if anyone would even show up, if there was any interest in the […]
This blog post has two parts to it. The first part will talk about a wonderful new book called “In Our Words” edited by Markus Reuber, Gregg Rawlings and Steven C. Schachter and which features testimonials of those living with PNES from around the world. It can be pre-ordered on Amazon with official release date
Every so often, I have an invited writer contribute something relevant to PNES on this blog. Recently, I heard from John Dougherty, author of “Lowering the Shield: Overcoming Psychogenic Seizures” about a disappointing event in his continuing efforts to improve the lives of those living with PNES. I agreed with him that it merits being
Yesterday, an article in print and video format came out in which a Canadian firefighter describes the long road he traveled with his diagnosis of PNES. In it, he explains how he started to have problems after experiencing three sequential traumatic experiences. These, first led to developing post-traumatic stress disorder, and then progressed into PNES
Dis-sociated- is a documentary by Clea Martin Vargas Dis-sociated will be a feature length documentary about Dissociative Seizures, also known as Non-epileptic Attack Disorder (NEAD) or Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizures (PNES). Clea decided to make this documentary after witnessing first-hand the tremendous difficulties her friend faced with her diagnosis of PNES (or dissociative seizures), or what
Dis-sociated: A documentary about psychogenic non-epileptic seizures Read More »
This year we had the pleasure of holding what has now become a tradition: our annual conference on psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES)—our fourth annual conference! Some things were new this year though. To begin with, we moved our conference location from Mahwah, NJ to Morristown, NJ, where the Morristown Medical Center generously offered to host
Fourth annual psychogenic non-epileptic seizures conference in New Jersey Read More »
Early in September, I had the pleasure of attending a very exciting conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. The conference was historic and groundbreaking in many ways, not least of which was that the last International FND had been held a total of SEVEN years before! First question to tackle before we move forward is: What are
Functional Neurological Disorders (FND) Conference in Scotland, 2017 Read More »
You may not believe this if you are currently living with PNES and encountering a lot of the day to day challenges that come with it, but the panorama for PNES is actually improving (I know it can feel for some like too slow or not at all where you live, but remember, there is
We’d be hard pressed to find a clinician or researcher who doesn’t agree that the proper treatment for a confirmed diagnosis of psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES) or non-epileptic attack disorder (NEAD-as it is called in the UK) is some form of psychotherapy. Although, we’ve known this for decades, we’re still sorely uncertain as to which
