A new review of catatonia, by Mormando and Francis, is out on PubMed today:
Catatonia revived: a unique syndrome updated
Mormando C and Francis A. Int Rev Psychiatry 2020. PMID 32067538
Here is the url for the pdf:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13VaiZNUGK67OC1r2sD3c_pqfZTIrCRin/view?usp=sharing
This is a concise, authoritative and well written review. ECT, of course, is a very important treatment option for catatonia. These authors are experts (yes, this is the Francis of the Bush-Francis Catatonia Rating Scale).
The revival of catatonia as a diagnosis in contemporary psychiatry, led by Dr. Max Fink and others, is important not only because it allows appropriate recognition/treatment of this serious condition, but also because it has brought renewed positive attention to ECT. We should recall that catatonia and depression were the two diagnoses recognized in the recent FDA reclassification of ECT devices. While the number of patients treated with ECT for a diagnosis of depression far exceeds those with a diagnosis of catatonia, catatonia and/or catatonic symptoms are no longer considered rare.
PS: this paper does not come up under the search term, "ECT", only under "electroconvulsive." A reminder that both terms must be searched to get the full picture of the emerging literature...
CK
The fascinating history of catatonia -- described in 1874, buried in the fantasy of dementia praecox by Kraepelin in 1890s, buried again by Bleuler in 1910 in "schizophrenia". And there it remained until 1970s when the Research Diagnostic Criteria were applied and catatonia was found to be common in mood disorders, especialy mania, and infrequent in schizophrenia.
ReplyDeleteInterest in neurotoxicity of neuroleptic drugs, the neuroleptic malignant syndrome, led to questioning catatonia's burial in schizophrenia in the various formulations of the DSM. The first intimation that catatonia was not schizophrenia appeared in DSM-IV in 1994; it was finally recognized as an independent entity in 2013 in DSM-5!
The remarkable story is detailed by the historian Edward Shorter in THE MADNESS OF FEAR: A History of Catatonia (Oxford, 2018). It relates Catatonia as identifiable, verifiable by tests, and eminently treatable by benzodiazepines and by ECT. It is one of very few DSM categories that meets the medical model of diagnosis.