Witchcraft, Possession, Hysteria and Health Care
I can do magic, or rather, magic-like things happen to me. If I drink Lacroix my right forearm arm will feel like it’s caught in the rain. I can appear possessed, talking with you enthusiastically one minute and unresponsive with fluttering eyelids the next…
Think of your brain as a computer that has hardware and software. The hardware is your physical brain, when it develops lesions, or tumors, or bruises you will experience direct health issues. The software part of your brain, the electricity, is what sends communication signals from your brain to your nervous system. And sometimes that malfunctions; Functional Neurological Disorder. That Lacroix phenomenon? Misfired signals. The possession? Non-epileptic seizure.
It may sound dramatic to talk about my illness in terms of magic and possession, but it’s upsettingly historically accurate.
The history of medicine is a history of control: societal anxieties about power, gender, and difference have found their sharpest daggers in how "care" is meted out to those who don't "fit." This is more than theory for me—it's reality. I spent years in healthcare advocacy, lobbying governments and writing about the politics of medicine, before being caught in the labyrinth myself. My experiences have shown me how urgent it is for marginalized and gender-diverse communities to claim space, demand justice, and fight for a public system that centers care, not profit.
Ghosts, Wombs, and Witch Hunts: How Western Medicine Framed FND
For most of history, what we call Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) was not just misunderstood —it was criminalized. Ancient civilizations interpreted the signs of FND through a lens of the supernatural: Mesopotamians saw the work of gods or spirits, Greeks blamed divine intervention, and European societies in the Middle Ages persecuted those with unexplained symptoms as witches or as the possessed. The "treatments" for these "conditions," whether prayer, punishment, or exorcism, did far more harm than good.
Yet as social structures evolved, so did medical explanations. With the rise of Greek medical texts, the uterus became the villain. The wandering womb, unanchored by marriage or childbirth, was said to cause myriad symptoms—including what we'd now recognize as seizures, paralysis, and blindness. The prescription? Marriage, sex, and reproductive "duty". For men, it was sperm retention—still tied deeply to ideas of proper sexuality and social control.
Hysteria, Forced Femininity, and the Pathologization of Autonomy
Most stories about "hysteria"—a diagnosis found on almost every page of the medical playbook until the 20th century—are really stories about the limits imposed on women's lives. Independence, intellectual ambition, seeking divorce, or even reading too many novels could all result in forced incarceration, mutilation, or isolation.
Modern diagnostic language may have changed (hysteria is no longer a DSM term), but the structures of doubt and exclusion haven't. For centuries, if you didn't—or couldn't—comply with forced heteronormative relationships, marriage, or childbearing, you became a problem to be solved, often by force.
Living the Medical Gaps: Diagnosis Delays, Dismissal, and Stigma
Fast forward to today, and FND is one of the most common neurological diagnoses. But that has not translated to solidarity or support. The mean wait for diagnosis? Six years. In that time, you're likely shuffled between specialties, dismissed as hysterical, and expected to "convince" each new provider that your symptoms are real.
And with a system stacked against you, sometimes you have to remind yourself that your symptoms are real. I occasionally would have a seizure at home, alone, and wonder if I was ‘faking’ it (for whom, my cats?). I was lucky to have a support system that didn’t let me give up trying to get answers, and the health care I deserved.
Despite being one of the most common neurological disorders and generating billions in healthcare costs, FND research is starved for funding and resources. Only ten clinical trials are running worldwide. Public institutions still treat FND as a marginal issue, and private medicine has no interest in the labour intensive, interdisciplinary care these conditions require.
Living with FND is often an exercise in being your own advocate—or being left behind. You not only have to endure the symptoms (unpredictable seizures, immobility, speech loss, constant pain), but you have to assemble your own interdisciplinary care (if you can find practitioners trained in FND at all). In Ontario, where I live, there is no clinical pathway for people diagnosed with FND; no long-term planning, no integrated referrals, no protected funding. The gendered legacy is not lost on any of us. Women, trans, and gender-diverse people are still much more likely to be diagnosed, but the categories and studies don't even acknowledge the complexity of these identities.
The Personal is (Still) Political: Advocacy Against Privatization and For Collective Care
These lived experiences are not accidental but are perpetuated by policy choices. As I saw working at Cystic Fibrosis Canada, advocacy can move mountains—unlocking access to medications, rewriting standards of care, and bringing the voices of the marginalized directly into the conversation. But even the models we built are threatened by privatization and austerity: look at Ontario, where funding for public hospitals is slashed while resources are handed to private clinics that mostly profit the wealthy.
Hospital boards, still overrepresented by business interests and political appointees, remain disconnected from patient realities. The decisions they make inevitably shift toward commodifying care, rather than expanding it.
This is why the struggle for equity in FND treatment—and all chronic conditions—must go hand in hand with anti-privatization work, hospital governance reform, and persistent, gender-inclusive advocacy. When the same system that dismissed my symptoms as a "women's problem" also undermines public provision, it becomes clear: these fights are inseparable.
Systemic Change Means Reimagining Power—Together
Addressing FND, reproductive injustice, forced heteronormativity, and healthcare gaps means more than getting a seat at the table; it means breaking the table down and rebuilding from the margins. FND’s legacy is collective: a story of everyone excluded, punished for noncompliance, or erased from data and decision-making. The only antidote to this centuries-old violence is collective, anticapitalist advocacy that centers the most marginalized voices.
We are not problems to be solved nor costs to reduce. Our lived experience—our refusal to be silenced—must shape research, delivery, and the future of healthcare. Whether as a long-time advocate, an organizer, or a person living daily with these symptoms, I know change will only come if we keep showing up for each other—again, and again, and again.