FND Education Project

REFERENCE · RECOVERY TECHNIQUES

Functional-Seizure Recovery Techniques and CBT Resources

Working outline for review: These pages plan an original, picture-led learning and practice series. They are not a finished treatment manual and do not replace diagnosis, individualized care, or an emergency plan.

Detailed recovery and care pages

These twelve standalone working drafts expand the seizure recovery overview. Choose pages that fit the person; they are not a required treatment sequence.

Original list: 10 entries

10 original entries map to 9 core pages after the two overlapping grounding entries were combined. One paediatric programme page and two care-planning pages bring the document total to 12. These are document counts, not counts of independently proven treatments. See the history audit.

  1. Clear diagnostic explanation and follow-up: Diagnostic Explanation and Continuing Care for Functional Seizures.
  2. Individual episode-safety plan: Individualized Episode Safety Plan for Functional Seizures.
  3. Warning, trigger and pattern mapping: Warning and Pattern Mapping for Functional Seizures.
  4. Seizure-focused psychological treatment: Seizure-Focused Psychological Treatment for Functional Seizures.
  5. Breathing-control training: Clinician-Taught Breathing Control for Functional Seizures.
  6. Treat coexisting conditions: Coexisting-Condition and Load Review for Functional Seizures.
  7. Medication review: Prescriber-Led Medication Review for Functional Seizures.
  8. Graded return to activity: Supported Return to Activities for Functional Seizures.
  9. Cold or textured sensory grounding at a familiar warning: Sensory Grounding and an Attention Anchor for Functional Seizures.
  10. A fixed visual or sensory anchor: Sensory Grounding and an Attention Anchor for Functional Seizures.

Additional treatment-review and care pages

These extend the collection but are not additional entries in the original list.

CBT resource map and booklet project

The existing resource map below does three things:

  1. identifies manuals, workbooks, websites, and study materials that already exist, so the project does not recreate them unnecessarily;
  2. explains how useful material will be selected and unified when programmes differ; and
  3. defines five short, printable CBT-informed booklets for people with functional seizures and their supporters.

Production status: The evidence method, course/booklet boundary, five outlines and content-creator guides are maintained as internal working material until reader-ready booklets exist.

Complete or substantial resources already online

Treatment of Functional Seizures in Children and Adolescents: A Mind-Body Manual for Health Professionals

  • Authors: Blanche Savage, Catherine Chudleigh, Clare Hawkes, Stephen Scher, and Kasia Kozlowska; developed through the Mind-Body Program at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Australia.
  • General premise: a flexible clinical programme for children and adolescents. It uses a stress-system model, body regulation, family work, rehabilitation, and return to normal developmental activities. It is written for health professionals, not as a self-directed patient workbook.
  • Access: the full digital manual is open access; the publisher asks the reader to enter AU$0 or a voluntary amount. A print edition is sold separately.
  • Use here: link to it prominently instead of reproducing it. It is especially valuable for paediatric clinical context, family-system work, and examples of diagrams. Adult readers should not assume that all paediatric recommendations transfer unchanged.

Taking Control of Your Seizures: Workbook

  • Authors: Joel M. Reiter, Donna Andrews, Charlotte Reiter, and W. Curt LaFrance Jr.
  • General premise: an eleven-session patient workbook used with a “seizure counsellor.” It combines education, goal setting, seizure calendars and journals, trigger observation, thought records, relaxation, warning recognition, communication, and relapse planning.
  • Access: published by Oxford University Press. The complete workbook is copyrighted and normally requires purchase or institutional access; chapter descriptions and some previews are visible online.
  • Use here: treat it as an important worked example of a structured adult programme. Link and summarize; do not copy its worksheets, session wording, or distinctive sequence.

Treating Nonepileptic Seizures: Therapist Guide

  • Authors: W. Curt LaFrance Jr. and Jeffrey Peter Wincze.
  • General premise: the clinician companion to the Taking Control approach. It guides therapists in delivering seizure-focused psychotherapy alongside continuing medical care.
  • Access: published by Oxford University Press; it is not a free public manual.
  • Use here: useful for understanding therapist responsibilities and treatment structure, but not a source to reproduce. The patient booklets must remain clear about which activities are suitable for self-reflection and which need professional help.

Programmes described in papers, but not available as complete free manuals

CODES: dissociative-seizure-specific CBT for adults

  • Developers: Laura Goldstein and the multidisciplinary CODES study group.
  • General premise: twelve one-hour sessions over roughly four to five months, followed by a booster session. The programme moves from engagement and a personal formulation to seizure-management skills, reducing avoidance, working with thoughts and emotions where relevant, and relapse planning.
  • What is public: the trial protocol, the main trial report, and a detailed process evaluation are open or publicly readable. We did not locate a complete public patient-and-therapist manual.
  • Outcome caution: in the large adult trial, the primary outcome—monthly seizure frequency at 12 months—did not differ significantly between groups. Several secondary outcomes did improve. CODES should therefore inform adult structure and treatment choices without being described as proven to stop seizures.

ReACT: Retraining and Control Therapy

  • Developer: Aaron Fobian and colleagues.
  • General premise: a brief paediatric treatment that targets catastrophic symptom expectations and low perceived control, uses habit-reversal principles, builds a competing response, changes family responses, and supports return to school.
  • What is public: the 2020 pilot randomized trial includes a session outline. Current programme information is available from ReACT FND Health, but a complete free treatment package was not located.
  • Outcome caution: the small paediatric trial reported striking short-term seizure outcomes. It remains a small study in young people and should not be silently generalized to adults or treated as proof that each component works independently.

Free education, self-help, and worksheet collections

NEUROkid: Living with Neurological Symptoms

  • Authors: Jack Garlovsky and Cheryl Newton, with a Sheffield-based youth and family focus.
  • General premise: accessible information about non-epileptic attacks, getting help, symptom management, and guidance for carers and schools.
  • Access: the NEUROkid website is free and also points to a free Apple Books version.
  • Use here: an excellent model for youth-friendly explanation and illustration. It is broader education and self-management, not a complete seizure-focused CBT manual.

Non-Epileptic Attacks: Sheffield resources

  • Authors/owner: the Sheffield non-epileptic attacks clinical and research group, associated with work by Markus Reuber and colleagues.
  • General premise: a practical library rather than one course. It includes patient information, a seizure/emotion diary, sensory grounding, breathing and relaxation sheets, a problem-solving worksheet, supporter instructions, and relapse planning.
  • Access: the PDF and media resource page is free.
  • Use here: link individual tools where useful and learn from their brevity. The fragmented format is one reason an original unified pathway may add value.

Dissociative Seizures: Right Decisions

  • Authors/owner: a Glasgow clinical team within NHS Scotland’s Right Decisions service.
  • General premise: a free digital toolkit covering diagnosis, reasons episodes may occur, treatment, self-management, supporter response, and a “wellness toolbox.”
  • Access: Dissociative Seizures: Right Decisions.
  • Use here: a current example of an organized public pathway. Driving, emergency, and service information is jurisdiction-specific and must not be copied into an international booklet as if universal.

Neurosymptoms: Treatment of Functional Seizures

  • Author: Jon Stone, with linked material from collaborators and other clinical groups.
  • General premise: a patient-facing explanation of warning recognition, alarm and avoidance, attention-shifting or grounding, supporter response, and signs of progress.
  • Access: Treatment of Functional Seizures is free and multilingual site navigation is available.
  • Use here: a useful concise overview and gateway to other resources. Some statements and explanatory models require updating or qualification against current guideline and safety language before adaptation.

ILAE functional/dissociative-seizure resource directory

  • Owner: International League Against Epilepsy Functional/Dissociative Seizures Task Force.
  • General premise: a curated directory of child, adult, multilingual, video, factsheet, book, and professional material.
  • Access: ILAE psychoeducation materials.
  • Use here: use as a discovery and link-maintenance source. Inclusion in a directory does not by itself establish that a resource or treatment is effective.

What the new booklets should add

The project should not claim to invent seizure-focused CBT. Its contribution is a free, coherent, highly visual learning route that:

  • separates general FND education from seizure-specific practice;
  • makes the reader choose and test strategies rather than prescribe one explanation or exercise to everyone;
  • brings adult, paediatric, family, and rehabilitation ideas together while keeping their evidence boundaries visible;
  • measures safety, confidence, participation, recovery time, and quality of life as well as episode frequency; and
  • remains useful when seizures continue.

Link to existing resources and describe their broad ideas. Do not reproduce copyrighted worksheets, figures, scripts, case examples, or session text. Even when a manual is free to download, its licence must be checked before adapting a figure or form. The unified booklets will use original language, original exercises, and newly commissioned or project-created illustrations.

Back to functional-seizure recovery techniques

Resource-map access check: August 25, 2026 · Detailed technique pages added September 14, 2026 · Clinical, lived-experience, copyright, and accessibility review pending