It is an acceptable way of telling important others that their relationship is in danger or that he or she is in pain, is suffering, and is in need of special consideration and special treatment. It also may function as a nonverbal means of controlling or manipulating others. Some believe that conversion reaction may have a neuropsychological basis. Serious medical illness predisposes people to conversion disorder. The symptoms may arise as secondary elaboration or exaggeration of a medical illness, sometimes appearing in locations and organ systems that were previously in the site of organic pathology.
Conversion also occurs in patients who have undergone extreme psychological stress.
For example, a young woman may become aphonic after she was mugged on the street with the assailant threatening her if she made a sound. These grief reactions were in response to losing a parent or grandparent as a result of death, divorce, or moving. School problems are also more common in children with conversion disorders. Their mothers are usually overprotective and overanxious and their fathers may be distant or uninvolved. Preexisting psychopathology also predisposes to the development of conversion disorders.