Read on Twitter
I have one specific thing to add to this: the attacks against the legitimacy of FND as a diagnosis hit me particularly hard in their (perhaps unintended) dismissal of mental health issues. Prior to, and possibly (I don’t know) disconnected from my FND symptoms (1/x) https://twitter.com/FndPortal/status/1350872153730777088
When people say that the FND diagnosis is abusive towards patients because it (as they understand it, albeit incorrectly) amounts to saying that the symptoms arise from some kind of mental illness, what I hear is that it makes me lesser-than for having mental illness (2/x)
as opposed to an illness that can be explained entirely by something more concrete. I am not worse than you for having struggled with anxiety, depression, and an eating disorder. Nor am I worse than anyone for having FND. (3/x)
It is not abusive towards me to help identify my symptoms and the best medical understanding of how they arise and how to treat them. It is abusive towards me to tell me I don’t understand my own experience. (4/x)
It is abusive towards me, and other FND patients, to say that we shouldn’t have access to care that can help us, and that instead we should refuse help in search of some other explanation. (5/x)
Science is always improving - maybe some of our current understandings are wrong. All I ask for is care based on the best understanding we have. If my mental illness may be connected to my FND, I want to explore that, not deny it. I worry about stigma, but I am not ashamed. (6/6)
Oops, I never finished the sentence on the first tweet — “Prior to and possibly (I don’t know) disconnected from my FND symptoms, I’ve experienced mental illness.”
