Brain/Mind Interface: Clinical & Medicolegal Challenges

Our Brain & Mind Ltd professional development conference on 5 October is only a few weeks away now. If you have not yet got tickets or want to read more about the event, visit Brain/Mind Interface Conference to get the opportunity to be part of an amazing day of learning and networking across health and legal professions, accredited with 6 CPD points

Over the next few days, we will be introducing you to our speakers and what they will be talking about.

Jon Stone is a Professor of Neurology at the University of Edinburgh and Consultant Neurologist with NHS Lothian. Jon is a leading, international expert on Functional Neurological Disorder (FND).

Jon's talk, Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) – less equal than others, will consider how FND is a common but hidden and stigmatised cause of disability in which people, typically in their 20s-40s develop symptoms like paralysis, tremor or seizures because of a problem with nervous system functioning, rather than an abnormality that can be seen on a scan or test. There are up to 100,000 people living with FND in the UK?

?FND has historically been strongly stigmatised with words like ‘hysteria’. One of the most pernicious features of that has been an assumption that FND is something similar to feigning. For most of the 20th?century, there was a view that FND was a diagnosis of exclusion which was entirely psychiatric in cause and treatment. In the last 20 years, a renaissance of research has led to a view that positions it at the interface between neurology and psychiatry with an evidence base for multidisciplinary rehabilitation and treatment. However, knowledge about FND among health professionals remains low, care provision is patchy and patients face long waits for treatment.??

Jon's talk will show why FND is now a diagnosis of inclusion, that can be made along with other physical and mental health comorbidities, a disorder where we are beginning to understand the ‘software’ issues in the brain that lead to symptoms, but also one where psychological factors and therapy remains important, and the evidence for why the large majority of people with FND are not feigning.?

We look forward to seeing you at the Brain/Mind Interface Conference on 5 October at The Royal College of Physicians.

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