Just a quickie,

I was trawling through posts on the 'ask the doctor' forum and came upon on one by
Dr Okun who stated that in his career he's come across two cases of px's who presented as parkinsonian but due to psychological problems ie in the mind rather than the brain.

Anyone else heard about such a thing ?

Cheers

Nigel

Do you mean what Wikipedia [1] describes as:

"Psychogenic disease (or psychogenic illness) is a name given to physical illnesses that are believed to arise from emotional or mental stressors, or from psychological or psychiatric disorders."

My guess is that for the vast majority of PwP there is an organic cause, but additionally there are psychological features. The organic and psychological symptoms interact with each other.

Tremor is an obvious symptom that is at least in part psychological. I can go in seconds from having no tremor to being unable to write when a stress event occurs. But the same stress event, even those far worse, would not have caused tremor before I got PD.

After being diagnosed with PD I had anxiety, which responded fairly well to a "talking therapy". I still have the PD, indeed over time it has got worse, but I think about it in a more positive way and feel better for it.

References

[1] Psychogenic disease - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John