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In an occasional column, Journal Watch Psychiatry editors briefly comment on review articles. These annotations were written by Drs. Deborah Cowley, Barbara Geller, Peter Roy-Byrne, Jonathan Silver, and Joel Yager.
Difficulty with conversion disorders. To diagnose conversion disorder, the clinician must first eliminate possible medical causes and then determine the causative psychological factors. These authors critically review the basis of the diagnosis, including its association with psychological stressors occurring before symptom onset and the questions of whether specific or historical stressors are associated with the disorder and whether evidence exists for a mechanistic connection between symptom and stressor.1 Differentiating betwe…