Weirdest Things People Blame on FND

One striking case I came across recently was a parent who corrected their daughter's vitamin and nutritional deficiencies, resulting in complete remission of her FND symptoms.

If supplements resolved her FND, why do we continue to call it FND? If nutritional deficiencies can trigger FND and we still call it FND, this raises serious doubts about whether FND is truly a distinct disorder or whether clinicians were simply treating an underlying medical issue while mistaking the presentation for the cause.

Skin rashes attributed to FND, really?

This is quite an odd story:

Initially, Jade Almond was diagnosed with an unspecified brain disorder. After months of rehabilitation, she regained the ability to run. However, she was then involved in a car accident and suffered another head injury, which set her back to square one. She had to relearn how to walk and run all over again. This second head injury is apparently what caused her Functional Neurological Disorder (FND).

The instant relapse from the car crash, despite normal prior progress, could indicate overlooked organic damage mislabeled as FND.

However, without detailed long-term scans or biomarkers in public reports, differentiation from functional symptoms remains unclear.

This highlights potential diagnostic limitations in attributing all effects to FND alone.

One thing I find concerning is how quickly everyone seems to accept this as "just another FND symptom." Has patients become so accustomed to attributing every new or unusual symptom to FND that the possibility of another diagnosis is no longer seriously considered? Sleeping 20–22 hours a day for five days and taking three weeks to recover is a significant change. Whether it ultimately turns out to be FND, another condition, or both, I'd have expected at least some discussion about investigating other neurological or medical causes.

You say changing eye colour, speaking strange languages and poltergeist activity as a joke, but I have had ptosis, randomly dilating pupils, difficulties with language, repeating random words and phrases, and atypical sudden onset psychosis (delusions and visual hallucinations) attributed to FND! I kind of realised they were reaching a bit when my hereditary tremor, diagnosed multiple times by multiple doctors as essential tremor, inherited from my father, also present in my brother, was labelled FND as well. My husband said to a doctor that he had searched far and wide and never seen a case of FND causing sudden episodes of psychosis. Her response was “well, FND can do anything”!