Keppra has helped my movement disorder but one doctor said the medicine was working because I wanted it to.?

I was on Keppra for a few months last year to stop the movements {hemiballismus}. I was told to stop the med when my main neurologist felt the problem was fixed. The movement started up again and I went back on Keppra. I am now free of the movement problem. One Dr. I saw thought I was only stressed and needed counseling and that the med was working only because I wanted it to. I was given Depakote first and it did nothing for me. Is there such a thing as the Dr. said? I am fine at home with a loving husband of almost 40 years and loving children and grandchildren, a wonderful church family, friends, etc. Yet she thinks I am a basketcase.

Sometimes movement disorders can be caused by stress or psychological trauma. This is called somatization (a physical symptom occurs in the body because of something in the mind and subsequent neurochemistry caused by the stress reaction). It does not mean that a person is "faking" a disorder. Something is indeed happening in the nervous system to cause the problem although it might not be a purely physical problem. In these instances (as in the case of certain types of seizures that mimick epilepsy, for example) medication often does not work. Psych counseling is recommended, but it is very difficult to get pts into such treatment and docs are often reluctant to get into the topic with pts anyway. It's easier to give them an antiepileptic or some such drug.

In your case, medication did work. It is not unusual for one medication to work when another doesn't. It, however, is not unreasonable for a physician to consider that a movement disorder is caused by a psychiatric problem--but if you are functioning well now and think that you are OK and that treatment helped you but your doctor thinks you are a "basket case," dump that doctor fast and find someone who is more sympathetic to you.