So cool! 🤓

I think it’s really important to both

1) continue to question our assumptions and look at the foundational beliefs we bring to the table

2) continually improve research + analysis methods over time

IMHO, This is the way ❤️

And we’re still having to argue against allegations of faking, secondary gain, argue for better models than “conversion”, etc, 100 years later, to overcome some highly… let’s say “edited”… accounts of a sample size of patients that would fit in a bus

The kindest thing I can say here is that your guest seems to mean well but appears not to be aware of current patient or research perspectives (beyond caricaturing them briefly?).

If I were on a panel with this person, I would not let these assertions pass unchallenged.

I should say that I genuinely appreciate you highlighting this condition and raising awareness!

But come on: “If they’re not getting better, I wonder about malingering component.” Would we say this of anyone w any other dx?

There are also more modern conceptual nations of the disorder.

We don’t have to, and shouldn’t, keep going back to Freud for everything.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

I’m about 8 minutes in, and my first impression is:

* FND should not be dxed via exclusion
* “No cause found” also not appropriate
* framing FND as a “defense” is weak and unsupported
* the debate of neuro vs psych is a misnomer - it’s a brain condition. Neuro + psych are careers not natural kinds

Failing is part of the plan. 🙏

That’s very good news indeed! Glad you’re starting things off with someone who knows the condition, I’ll be cheering for you!

And even though he’s impacted my life incalculably for the better, I know that I can only see a small slice of what Dr. Mark Hallett meant to his colleagues, and to other disabled people around the world.

We’ve lost a lion.

Rest in peace, Dr. Hallett.

I finally got to thank him, 7 years later, at the 2024 Functional Neurological Disorder Society meeting in Verona.

But that’s not who Mark Hallett was to me.

To me, he was the doctor who actually cared enough to take the case, to actually figure out the problem, and to support patients w little-known conditions no one else would look at.

He mentored countless clinicians and researchers at the NIH’s Human Motor Control Unit.

He served as President of the Movement Disorder Society, FND Society, and more.

He received, and earned, too many awards to count.

It was only later that I learned about the Dr. Hallett that everyone else seemed to know – the world’s most-cited contemporary neurologist, pioneer in the field of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), investigator of the neurobiological basis of free will.