Psychogenic Non Epileptic Seizures Information
What are suggestion techniques and how were they used to make the diagnosis of PNES?
It has been reported that PNES episodes can be "suggested" to the patient and that they can produce the events almost on "request"
Most of these methods (i.e. suggesting to the patient that a substance will be rubbed on their skin or injected into them and will produce a seizure) have largely been abandoned in recent years due to ethical concerns. The main reason to stop implementing these tactics is because using them places the patient-doctor relationship and trust at risk. Feeling "tricked" by one's own doctor, can be very painful even if it was done with the best intentions.
• Currently, among the various methods that can be useful in bringing about an attack are hyperventilation and light stimulation. These are considered ethical since they are also often used to trigger epileptic attacks.
• Another non-invasive and non-deceptive approach to the triggering of a PNES event is the use of an intensive psychiatric interview that is designed to bring forth a non-epileptic attack during video EEG monitoring. Patients who have gone through this method later report that they found it helpful and did not consider it a negative experience.
