It so happens I have a friend who was having seizures. The doctors kept insisting that it was psychological and he just needed to de-stress. He had to travel overseas and pay a fortune to get treated overseas because nobody here would take him seriously.
I’ve actually heard of that. The government basically telling neurologists to diagnose “Functional Disorder” or “Functional Neurological Disorder” in anyone who has neurological symptoms the neurologist can’t find the cause of (like seizures).
Down the line these people end up being diagnosed with neurological diseases the neurologist who initially told them their symptoms were functional aka. stress related/psychological, just forgot to check for. So it’s basically an unscientific waste of time to save money for governments/insurers.
Do you happen to have any information on that I could forward him for reading?
Sure. FND is still a relatively niche term, so you have maybe only 5 people spending their careers researching it, these 5 people have built their career upon the psychological concept and thus will defend it at all costs.
Then you have a couple researchers who are researching side issues related to FND and are concerned by the lack of scientific basis with FND — so have written about it. David Tuller is one of them. Here’s a decent post he wrote in 2020 https://virology.ws/2020/01/07/trial-by-error-some-more-thoughts-on-functional-neurological-disorder/