Youth With Psychogenic Non-Syncopal Collapse Have More Somatic and Psychiatric Symptoms and Lower Perceptions of Peer Relationships Than Youth With Syncope

Little is known about somatic and psychiatric symptoms and perceived peer relationships of patients with psychogenic nonsyncopal collapse. This study aimed to compare somatic and psychiatric symptoms and other elements potentially related to functional neurological symptom disorders between youth with psychogenic nonsyncopal collapse and those with neurally mediated syncope. Before testing, patients completed a structured interview and questionnaire addressing current symptoms, previous psychiatric diagnoses, referrals, diagnostic testing, prescribed medications, and patient self-ratings of anxiety, depression, and perceived peer relationships. Compared with patients with syncope (n = 60), patients with psychogenic nonsyncopal collapse (n = 60) had higher ratings for lightheadedness and vertigo, more abdominal pain, more chronic headaches, more fatigue, more sleep disturbances, more prescriptions for antidepressant medicines, more encephalograms performed, more referrals to psychiatry, and more psychiatric diagnoses including anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, previous nonfainting conversion disorders, and eating disorders (all p