An observational study in Functional Neurological Symptom Disorder, sponsored by Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Completed at 1 site in United Kingdom. Open to participants aged 18 Years and older, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-10-07.
Sponsored by Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust · Observational
Functional Neurological Symptom Disorders (FNSD) are one of the commonest reasons why patients are referred to neurologists. They are as disabling as neurological disorders causing similar symptoms related to more readily demonstrable pathophysiological or structural changes, however, FNSD are more commonly associated with psychiatric comorbidities. Psychotherapy is a treatment option for FNSD although there is still a dearth of reliable evidence that psychotherapy works for FNSD or how it may help. This is partly due to the nature of psychotherapeutic interventions but also to the difficulties associated with studying treatment outcome in a patient population that is highly heterogeneous in terms of aetiology and clinical presentation. This study contributes to a larger research project that is examining the efficacy of specialist psychotherapy for patients with FNSD utilising a range of approaches including objective cognitive and behavioural measures and subsequently exploring the reliability and usefulness of different outcome measurement approaches in this patient group. This study specifically aims to assess whether psychotherapy treatment in FNSD infers any change in cognitive behaviours of impulsivity and biases in the processing of emotional information. FNSD patients will complete two computer-based tasks and health-related questionnaires before, immediately after and at 6-months follow up after completing psychotherapy treatment sessions to measure any treatment-associated improvements. Data collected from patients not receiving any psychotherapy and participants without FNSD will provide longitudinal and cross-sectional control data respectively.
102 studies on the registry are indexed under Conversion Disorder; 36 are open to participants now.
This study's enrollment of 122 is above the median of 60 across 42 observational studies indexed under Conversion Disorder.
Browse Conversion Disorder studies →Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is the lead sponsor of 213 studies on the registry; 26 are open to participants now.
Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.
Patients with FNSD without a history of/current psychotherapy treatment; Patients with FNSD/NEAD who have just completed psychotherapy (post-pt); Patients with FNSD/NEAD who are about to begin psychotherapy (curr-pt); 5.4.4 Healthy control participants (HC)
Go through the criteria one by one — yes, no or not sure — and take the list to your doctor or the study team. Kept in this browser only.
Exclusion Criteria:
Behavioral: STH Specialist Neurology Pyschotherapy
The Neurology psychotherapy service at STH provides care as standard practice to the patient population of focus in this study. Patients enter the psychotherapy service by referral from their consultant and an initial assessment comprising an hour-long semi-structured interview in which the patient and therapist decide in collaboration whether therapy would be useful. Patients are assigned to a therapist based on therapist availability. The service offers interventions with a flexible maximum of 20 sessions each 50 minutes long. Initially, a patient is booked for 4-6 sessions after which a collaborative progress review takes place. At this point, a further 4-6 sessions will be booked together, or a final session planned to end therapy and plan for discharge. In some circumstances, it is clear that a full 20 sessions would be beneficial, and patients are contracted. In other cases, therapy continues to be reviewed every 4-6 weeks.
Delay discounting measure to assess the rate of discounting across delays and probabilities
The discounting measure used in the present study will mimic that of the EMOTICOM battery, adapted from previous studies done on discounting process (Malesza and Ostaszewski, 2013; Malesza, 2019) The discounting measure will assess the rate of discounting across delays and probabilities.
Time frame: Baseline
Negative affective priming: evaluative categorisation task
Time frame: Baseline
GAD-7
The GAD-7 is a 7 item self-report questionnaire, designed to assess symptoms of anxiety experienced over the past 2 weeks.
Time frame: Baseline
Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9)
The PHQ-9 is a 9 item self-report questionnaire measuring symptoms of depression over the past 2 weeks.
Time frame: Baseline
EuroQol 5-Dimension- 3 level (EQ-5D-3L)
The 3-level version of EQ-5D (EQ-5D-3L) was introduced in 1990 by the EuroQol Group.
Time frame: Baseline
Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS)
The DERS is a widely used and well-validated self-report measure designed to assess multiple aspects of emotion regulation.
Time frame: Baseline
The self-Efficacy, Assertiveness, Social support, self-awareness and hElpful questionnaire (EASE)
The EASE is a novel patient-reported outcome measure designed to detect psychotherapy-related change.
Time frame: Baseline
Mood Zoom Questionnaire
The Mood Zoom (MZ) questionnaire was conceived as part of the AMoSS study to provide a compact daily assessment of mood variability delivered via a smartphone application.
Time frame: Baseline
Plan to share: No
No publications or documents are linked to this record.
Ran from Jan 2022 to primary completion in Feb 2023, 13 months.
Of 19 observational studies under Conversion Disorder, half reached primary completion within 23 months of starting (the median), counting those still running; a quarter within 13 and three quarters within 55. This study's 13 months is below that.
How these figures are worked out, and which studies are left out of them.
From the registry record's own update history. This site started tracking changes on Sep 25, 2026; for anything earlier, see the record history on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗
This study is completed, as verified in Oct 2026. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.
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Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust →