Breaking the spell: Narrative Medicine applications for Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures (PNES)

Abstract

Narrative Medicine (NM) sessions draw out the patient’s narrative of illness or injury and treatment in the context of the patient’s whole life story. The focus is to discover topics and areas in the patient’s narrative that the patient needs to explore. PNES may be understood in many cases as a communication disorder in which distress is expressed somatically in a pathological way instead of an adaptive and verbal manner. Patients with PNES are frequently misdiagnosed, and accurate diagnosis may be delayed for many years. PNES may cause severe disruption of the patient’s quality of life in terms of employment or schooling as well as relationships and activities of daily living. NM sessions encourage patients to communicate more effectively about their unspeakable distress and reclaim their lives from the communication disorder of PNES. Narrative writing exercises have also proven helpful for patients facing a variety of traumas and major stresses in situations similar to those faced by patients with PNES. This paper is a narrative review with an illustrative case report indicating NM applications to help a patient with PNES to communicate about a traumatic past that has been avoided and address psychogenic symptoms.