Catatonia: looking back and moving forward

• Verfasst von: Hirjak, Dusan [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Wolf, Robert Christian [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Landwehrmeyer, Bernhard [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Northoff, Georg [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Catatonia: looking back and moving forward
• Verf.angabe: Dusan Hirjak, Robert Christian Wolf, G. Bernhard Landwehrmeyer and Georg Northoff
• E-Jahr: 2022
• Jahr: September 2022
• Umfang: 4 S.
• Illustrationen: Illustrationen
• Fussnoten: Online veröffentlicht: 27. Mai 2022 ; Gesehen am 25.09.2023
• Titel Quelle: Enthalten in: Brain
• Ort Quelle: Oxford : Oxford Univ. Press, 1878
• Jahr Quelle: 2022
• Band/Heft Quelle: 145(2022), 9 vom: Sept., Seite 2939-2942
• ISSN Quelle: 1460-2156
• DOI: doi:10.1093/brain/awac196
• Datenträger: Online-Ressource
• Sprache: eng
• K10plus-PPN: 186023478X

Abstract

Catatonia is a complex neuropsychiatric disorder with motor, affective and cognitive-behavioural manifestations. Understanding the relationships between these features has proven to be a challenge for psychiatrists and neurologists alike. Here we look back at the history of catatonia but also provide a modern perspective on how to understand the condition and what it can tell us both clinically and scientifically.Catatonia can present with a bewildering constellation of symptoms. Some patients may be severely anxious, or unusually withdrawn to the point of being unwilling to speak, or they might display a fixed facial expression with no self-initiated movements. Some of them may repeat questions posed to them in a perseverative fashion and showed bizarre, exaggerated, and seemingly purposeless actions or movements. These motor phenomena (e.g. stupor, posturing, catalepsy, waxy flexibility, stereotypies, akinesia), affective signs (e.g. fear, aggression, anxiety, flat affect, affect incontinence, impulsivity), and cognitive-behavioural disturbances (e.g. mutism, autism, negativism, echolalia, echopraxia, grimacing, mannerism, rituals, automatic obedience) have all been observed in catatonia. Catatonia has been reported in 5-18% of patients in inpatient psychiatric units and 3.3% on neurology/neuropsychiatric tertiary care inpatient units.1 Importantly, catatonia may be associated with potentially life-threatening circulatory collapse, respiratory collapse, renal failure, seizures, and coma. Timely recognition may therefore be lifesaving as catatonia tends to have a favourable prognosis once treated appropriately.