Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T12:40:04.557Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Secondary Acute Lethal Catatonia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

R. S. Ferguson
R. S. Ferguson*
Affiliation:
St. Nicholas Hospital, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

At various times attempts have been made to establish a specific pathological entity “acute lethal catatonia”. Stauder and Scheid (quoted by Mayer Gross et al., 1954) among the older writers have collected a number of fatal cases and more recently Locher (1941) has suspected qualitative difference in the type of illness of those mental patients who die suddenly in an acute catatonic state. However the general view nowadays seems to be that death is due to exhaustion or intercurrent illness. A fatal outcome is very unusual in current practice perhaps because of improved therapy. The symptoms of acute catatonic schizophrenia are so striking that a determined quest for a biochemical basis for the whole schizophrenic process has been sought in this, its most dramatic manifestation. Success in this direction has often been claimed (e.g. Fischer, 1953; Rieder, 1954; Gjessing, 1953, inter alia) but has also frequently been disputed (Georgi, Rieder and Weber, 1954). The following case is reported because the symptoms seemed to be clearly related to physiological change. It tends also to throw further doubt on the entity of acute lethal catatonia of Locher. Interesting EEG findings and characteristic response to amytal are also noted.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 104 , Issue 435 , April 1958 , pp. 439 - 444
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1958 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Colony, H. S., and Willis, S. E., “EEG studies of 1,000 schizophrenic cases”, Amer. J. Psychiat., 1956, 113, 163–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edison, C. B., “Studies of the toxicity of schizophrenic blood serum”, Dis. Nerv. Syst., 1956, 17, 77–80.Google Scholar
Elkes, J., Elkes, C., and Bradley, P. B., “The effect of some drugs on the electrical activity of the brain, and on behaviour”, J. Ment. Sci., 1954, 100, 125–128.Google Scholar
Fischer, R., “Stress and the toxicity of schizophrenic serum”, Science, 1953, 118, 409–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gellhorn, E., Physiological Foundations of Neurology and Psychiatry, 1953. St. Paul: The North Central Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Georgi, F., Rieder, K. P., and Weber, R., Remarks on Fischer's article “Stress and toxicity of schizophrenic serum”, Science, 1954, 120, 504–506.Google Scholar
Gjessing, R., Arch. Psychiat. Nervenkraht., 1953, 191, 191.Google Scholar
Gerard, R. W., “The biological roots of psychiatry”, Amer. J. Psychiat., 1955, 112, 83.Google Scholar
Gould, J., “The use of vitamins in psychiatric practice”, Proc. Royal Soc. Med., 1954, 47, 3, 215–219.Google Scholar
Hoskins, R. G., The Biology of Schizophrenia, 1946. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Locher, R., “On the sudden death of mental patients and the acute catatoniform syndrome with fatal outcome”, Mschr. Psychiat. Neurol., 1941, 103, 278.Google Scholar
Mayer-Gross, , Slater, E., and Roth, M., Clinical Psychiatry, 1954. London: Cassell & Co. Google Scholar
Rieder, H. P., “Biological determination of toxicity in pathological body fluids”, Confinia Neurologica, 1954, 14, 65–87.Google Scholar
Sargant, W., and Slater, E., Physical Methods of Treatment in Psychiatry, 1954. London and Edinburgh: E. & S. Livingstone.Google Scholar
Scharenberg, K., and Brown, E. O., “Histopathology of catatonic states”, J. Neuropath Ex. Neurol., 1954, 13, 592–600.Google Scholar
Shapiro, A. K., “Attempt to demonstrate a catatonigenic agent in the cerebrospinal fluid of catatonic schizophrenic patients”, J. Nerv. Ment. Dis., 1956, 123, 1, 65–71.Google Scholar
Smith, P. S., and Schwartz, D. K., “Sodium amytal as a means of obtaining contact in stuporose and uncommunicative cases”, Psychiat. Quart., 1934, 8, 748.Google Scholar
Solomon, H. C., Kaufman, M. P., and D'Elseaux, F., “Some effects of the inhalation of oxygen and carbon dioxide and of intravenous sodium amytal in certain neurological conditions”, Amer. J. Psychiat., 1931, 10, 761.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thorne, M. W., “Psychologic structure of catatonia—a psychopharmacological survey using sodium amytal”, Arch. Neurol. Psychiat., 1938, 39, 513–517.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.