Update on treatments of psychological nonepileptic seizures

The literature on treatment of psychological nonepileptic seizures (NES) is limited, marked by a number of case reports and anecdotal approaches to this difficult-to-treat population. A recent review of the NES treatment literature revealed 20 reports dealing with NES treatment. The majority of the reports were class IV studies. Since the prior review, a number of pilot trials in NES treatment have been published. In this article, we summarize the etiologic conceptualizations of NES, and link these to mechanism informed treatments. We describe the recent literature on NES treatments and propose future directions for intervention research. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.