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In:Discourses of Helping Professions:
Edited by Eva-Maria Graf, Marlene Sator and Thomas Spranz-Fogasy
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 252] 2014
► pp. 289–314

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Neurologists' approaches to making psychosocial attributions in patients with functional neurological symptoms

Published online: 18 December 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.252.12mon
Doctors perceive consultations with patients with functional neurological symptoms (FNS) as challenging because of the dichotomy between the psychosocial nature of the symptoms and patients’ perceptions that their condition is essentially physical. Through conversation analysis, we describe some communicative strategies neurologists employ to make psychosocial attributions, ranging from unilateral to more bilateral approaches. In unilateral approaches doctors employ general explanations about the psychosocial aetiology, thereby pre-empting any potential resistance. In bilateral approaches, doctors actively involve patients in discussing potential psychosocial causes, by also making direct and specific psychosocial attributions. These practices display doctors’ great caution in this communicative task; and they exhibit an hybridization with those employed by psychologists, which might be strictly linked to this type of patients.
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Stortenbeker, Inge, Wyke Stommel, Tim olde Hartman, Sandra van Dulmen & Enny Das
2022. How General Practitioners Raise Psychosocial Concerns as a Potential Cause of Medically Unexplained Symptoms: A Conversation Analysis. Health Communication 37:6 ► pp. 696 ff. DOI logo
Dooley, Jemima, Nick Bass & Rose McCabe
2018. How do doctors deliver a diagnosis of dementia in memory clinics?. The British Journal of Psychiatry 212:4 ► pp. 239 ff. DOI logo

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