BMJ  2005;331 (29 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7523.0

Misdiagnosing "hysteria" has remained steady since the 1970s

Misdiagnosing symptoms of non-psychiatric diseases such as stroke as psychiatric illness ("hysteria") happened in about a third of patients diagnosed with "conversion symptoms" in the 1950s but had fallen to 4% by the 1970s and has remained steady since then. In a systematic review Stone and colleagues (p 989) included almost 1500 adults with motor and sensory symptoms unexplained by disease from 27 studies on diagnostic outcomes with a median follow-up time of five years. Misdiagnosis was most common in patients with gait or movement disorders and a psychiatric history, and the advent of computed tomography did not further improve diagnostic accuracy.


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Relevant Article

Systematic review of misdiagnosis of conversion symptoms and "hysteria"
Jon Stone, Roger Smyth, Alan Carson, Steff Lewis, Robin Prescott, Charles Warlow, and Michael Sharpe
BMJ 2005 331: 989. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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