Original Research Article
Year: 2021 | Month: December | Volume: 8 | Issue: 12 | Pages: 513-529
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijrr.20211263
A Descriptive Study on the Clinical Correlates of Conversion Disorder
Ronald Roy K
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Trichy SRM Medical College Hospital and Research Centre, Trichy, Tamilnadu, India.
ABSTRACT
Aim: Conversion disorder is defined by the presence of deficits affecting the voluntary motor or sensory functions lacking any known neurological cause. The aim of the study is to describe the sociodemographic profile and clinical characteristics including the frequency distribution of various types of presentations of patients with conversion disorders in a tertiary care psychiatric facility and to assess the presence of depression and anxiety and its level of severity in those patients.
Methods: After obtaining informed consent, 50 consecutive patients who had met with the ICD-10 diagnosis criteria for conversion disorder and those who meet the inclusion/exclusion criteria, were enrolled for the study. They were interviewed using a semi-structured Performa and were administered Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS) and the results were analysed using SPSS software and interpreted.
Results: Majority of the study patients were young adolescents (48%), females (76%), rural residents (60%), mostly unmarried (46%). Dissociative motor disorders (30%) were the most common presentation followed by mixed dissociative disorder (26%) and Dissociative convulsions (22%). HAD scale revealed that, both depression and anxiety scores were significantly high in major number of patients.
Conclusion: The most common presenting symptom was that of dissociative motor type followed by dissociative convulsions with considerably high rates of depression (48%) and anxiety (54%). This made us to conclude that conversion as a phenomenon emerges to uphold its significance as a non-verbal communication process of the subconscious Mind.
Keywords: Conversion, Dissociation, Hysteria, Dissociative Motor Disorder, Dissociative Convulsions, Laterality, Depression, Anxiety.
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