Tracking the legal status of a cohort of inpatients on discharge from a 72-hour assessment unit.

African Journal of Psychiatry • September 2011 318 presence of glucocorticoid receptors (GR) in the brain which mediate feed back action of steroids.8 • That in catatonic patients, as Northoff hypothesizes, there is modulation of cortical and sub cortical structures due to various conditions. The resultant hyperdopaminergic mesolimbic system may attempt a restitutive down regulation of dopamine to ward off psychosis, thus affecting other systems and producing motor symptoms seen in catatonia via the nigrostriatal pathway.9 Hence, corticosteroids which have been known to affect cortical and sub cortical structures can invariably cause catatonic features.