Professor Jon Stone
Name: Professor Jon Stone
Specialty: Neurologist, Dept. Clinical Neurosciences, University of Edinburgh
Location: Edinburgh, Edinburgh University
Address: Western General Hosp Crewe Rd Edinburgh EH42XU UK
Job Title: Consultant Neurologist and Honorary Reader
Qualifications: MBChB MRCP PhD
Research: Yes
Provide Treatment: Inpatient and outpatient (‘Only NHS referrals from South East Scotland’)
About:
Professor Jon Stone is an NHS Consultant Neurologist and Honorary Reader in Neurology in Edinburgh. Professor Stone has been involved with research on functional symptoms in neurology since 1999. Professor Stone’s PhD was a case control study of functional weakness. He often states, “These are genuine symptoms which relate to a problem in nervous system functioning rather than disease.”
In 2009 Stone wrote a self-help website for patients, www.neurosymptoms.org, which has been well received by patients and doctors internationally. The website has been translated into 12 languages and receives approximately 60,000 hits per month (2017).
With colleagues Michael Sharpe, Alan Carson and Charles Warlow he has also worked on the Scottish Neurological Symptoms Study (SNSS), (a large epidemiological study in neurology outpatients), a randomised controlled trial of treatment of guided self-help published in 2011, a functional MRI study of functional paralysis and systematic reviews. He led on new diagnostic criteria for functional disorders in DSM-5 and ICD-11 and the development of professional organisations in the area.
August 2012, Stone became a National Research Strategy Clinician (NHS Scotland). Professor Jon Stone was awarded the RCP Jean Hunter Prize for Nervous Disorders in 2014. Two years later he co-edited the volume ‘Functional Neurologic Disorder’ (ed Hallett, Stone, Carson) Elsevier 2016, setting a new standard for a teaching and research curriculum. Stone has given invited plenary sessions at the World Congress of Neurology, American Academy of Neurology and Movement Disorders Congresses as well as lectures to 18 neurology department in the UK and grand rounds at Harvard and Stanford. In 2017 he was awarded the President’s Medal by the Royal College of Psychiatrists and later that year he co-chaired a landmark international conference in Edinburgh on FND with 561 delegates.
Professort Stone currently (2018) runs a weekly clinic for patients with functional movement disorders and dissociative (non-epileptic) seizures at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh. Stone is unable to see referrals from outside South East Scotland, does not carry out private practice, and still receives more clinical referrals than he can personally see. Professor Jon Stone is keen to improve clinical understanding and treatments for patients with functional neurological symptoms. He states “I believe the best way to do this is through clinical research and by providing good educational and self-help resources to improve knowledge and attitudes among doctors and patients.”
Read more about Professor Jon Stone.
Research Direction:
Professor Stone is pursuing further descriptive clinical research and piloting multidisciplinary treatments involving neurology and psychiatry. He is especially interested in developing treatments for functional weakness with a view to further randomised controlled trials. You can find a list of Stones published research articles here.
