įear or a heightened state of anxiety have also been described during a catatonic episode. Northoff postulated that it was the intensity of emotions, whether positive (as in catatonic excitement) or negative (as in catatonic stupor), that triggered catatonia. Around the same time, Wernicke proposed the concept of motor psychosis which was understood to view catatonia as “abnormalities of motion and of speech which were independent of thought or will”. Shorter and Fink, address this in their book on catatonic stupor, The Madness of Fear, and ask whether catatonia is a mostly a neurological phenomenon with no psychological explanation behind it or whether it is a case of the mind remaining active during catatonia, even though one is unable to communicate.įrom the 1900, catatonia was postulated to have a psychology of its own with symptoms seen as symbolic of underlying psychological drivers. Shorter and Fink and Moskowitz characterized catatonia as a state of extreme fear that manifests as freezing, like that seen in some animals who respond with immobility or freezing when faced with danger.

Rosebush and Mazurek found that most patients felt very anxious during the catatonic episode, and 15% thought they were either already dead or were going to die. went on to categorize domains for assessment of the subjective experience of catatonia, which included the patient’s subjective description of their altered motor function, their interaction with their environment, and their emotional and cognitive experiences during the catatonic episode. This is the motor manifestation of being caught in two opposing actions at the same time. There was also ambivalence, which correlates with one of the signs that may be observed in catatonia, namely ambitendency. This included intense emotions that could not be controlled.

Their experience was less focused on the change in their movements and more on the change in their cognitive or affective experience. paper on the subjective experience of catatonia, 24 patients with catatonia provided self-reports at the 3-week point following an episode of catatonia. Patients with catatonia describe experiencing very intense emotional states. The psychological experience of catatonia Catatonia is often episodic with a good response to treatment, but it may also be protracted and potentially fatal if it is not detected early enough or if it is not treated effectively. The prevalence rates at the study site were found to be 11.9% over 6 months and 18.3 per year. The prevalence of catatonia is wide, ranging from just below 10% to a little over 60% per year. In this paper, we explore the catatonic experience using self-reports collected during at follow-up from participants who screened positive for catatonia. This means patients are often unable to describe their experiences during an acute episode. It interferes with a patient’s ability to communicate, especially when an episode is severe, protracted, or characterized by prominent mutism, excitement, or speech oddities. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.Ĭatatonia is a psychomotor abnormality that presents mainly with prominent psychomotor abnormalities that include excessive movement, significantly decreased movement and abnormal movement. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.

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