Children and adolescents (the terms, child and children, refer to this wide age range throughout the manual) with conversion disorder involuntarily displace tension associated with negative emotions, such as anxiety, anger, fear, frustration, and demoralization onto physical symptoms. Pediatric PNES typically involves a conversion disorder whose clinical manifestations resemble seizures due to epilepsy. Even though pediatric PNES is a psychiatric disorder, mental health professionals (child psychiatrists, psychologists, neuropsychologists, and social workers) are reluctant to treat youth with this disorder. The main reason for their reticence is a lack of training. Most mental health training programs do not teach about the clinical manifestations of epilepsy, the psychosocial aspects of epilepsy, and how to treat children with conversion disorders, such as PNES. Thus, many mental health professionals do not have the knowledge and skill set needed to work with these children and their families.

Nonmental health clinicians (pediatric neurologists, epileptologists, pediatricians, family physicians, nurse practitioners, and clinical nurse specialists) who treat children with epilepsy are the first to see children with PNES. Since they frequently have little, if any, training in child psychiatry or psychology, they too feel ill equipped to work with children with PNES and their parents after this diagnosis is confirmed. They resist stopping the children’s antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) if mental health professionals are not treating the children even though AEDs do not treat PNES symptoms [1].