Nomenclature: Hysteria, psychosomatic, and pseudoseizure are OUT. Neurologists still use these words all of the time, just not in front of patients and their families. Other words we take pains to avoid are psychiatric and psychiatrist. People tend to hear these as crazy and shrink, and this rarely goes over well with anyone. Terms that are IN include: conversion disorder instead of hysteria, functional instead of psychosomatic (the two are not equivalent in any case), and psychological non-epileptic seizure— or P-NES (I kid you not)—instead of pseudoseizure, as in, “This lady has a P-NES.”
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