Personality Profiles Among People With Functional Motor Disorders

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychology

Background:

• Psychological issues are common in functional neurological disorder (FND), particularly functional seizures.
• Findings for functional motor disorder (FMD) are less conclusive regarding psychological comorbidities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate personality profiles and emotional-cognitive functioning in individuals with FMD.
• To compare FMD patients with healthy controls (HC) using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2).

Main Methods:

• Thirty individuals with FMD and 30 age-, sex-, and education-matched HC individuals participated.
• Participants completed the MMPI-2, and data were analyzed using parametric tests after logarithmic transformation.

Main Results:

• Individuals with FMD scored significantly higher on MMPI-2 clinical scales including hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria, psychopathic deviance, paranoia, psychasthenia, and schizophrenia.
• A specific FMD personality pattern, the 'passive-aggressive valley,' was identified, characterized by high psychopathic deviance/paranoia and low masculinity-femininity scores.
• FMD patients showed elevated scores on anxiety, obsessiveness, depression, health concerns, low self-esteem, and work interference scales.

Conclusions:

• Individuals with FMD demonstrate significant emotional-cognitive impairments, including heightened somatic attention, poor emotional insight, and cognitive inflexibility.
• These impairments are linked to personality features such as susceptibility, threat misperception, unexpressed anger, and unmet emotional needs.