Clinical and epidemiological characteristics of functional neurological disorders in children and adolescents treated in the child psychiatry department of Casablanca

Abstract

Objectives: Functional neurological disorders (FNDs) are a common source of disability in medicine. Patients have often been misdiagnosed, correctly diagnosed after long delays, and/or subjected to misdiagnoses that lead to inadequate treatments, unnecessary costly evaluations, and poor outcomes. We sought to identify the epidemiological and clinical characteristics of children and adolescents suffering from functional neurological disorders in the child and adolescent psychiatry department in CASABLANCA. Methods: We conducted a retrospective study of 52 children and adolescents admitted for functional neurological disorders from March 2019 to July 2021, and analyzed their clinical profiles, sociocultural, environmental and psychological characteristics. Results: In our study, nearly the threatening quarters of the patients were girls, stressor antecedents were notably reported, most often related to family stressors. Recent or distant history of abuse was of varying degrees. The neurological presentations were complex, with nearly half of the patients having multiple distinct neurological symptoms. Motor symptoms and non-epileptic seizures were the most frequent, with an acute mode of onset in the majority of the cases. The course was marked by the regression of symptoms in the majority of patients, with their persistence in the third of the cases, meanwhile a small group of the cases interrupted the follow-up. A high resource use was noted due to the participation of several specialized consultants, the conduction of many diagnostic studies, and lengthy hospital stays. Conclusion: Our data confirms previous findings in the literature and contributes to a better understanding and characterization of our population.