A catatonic patient without known relatives or advance directives faced possible death without electroconvulsive treatment (ECT). The authors describe using medication to restore capacity to permit the patient to give critical history and consent to potentially life-saving treatment. Even had a proxy been available, the jurisdiction in which he fell ill forbade substituted judgment for ECT, per...

This study aimed to determine the prevalence and the clinical correlates of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) among 158 inpatient youths with two types of severe psychiatric disorders. ACEs were retrospectively collected with the ACEs scale and the List of Threatening Experiences Questionnaire in 77 patients hospitalized for a catatonic syndrome (average age 15.2 years) and 81 for a manic or...

OBJECTIVE Catatonia is a psychomotor syndrome characterized by concomitant emotional, behavioural and motor symptoms. In many cases clinical symptoms disappear almost immediately with administration of lorazepam, which acts on GABA(A) receptors. METHODS Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we investigated prefrontal activation patterns during emotion processing in catatonic pati...

In a prospective open trial, 30 inpatients with catatonic signs were treated systematically with oral lorazepam (dosage ranging between 3 to 8 mg/d) for a period of 5 days and subsequently with ECT if lorazepam trial failed. Outcome was monitored quantitatively during the treatment phase with Bush-Francis catatonia rating scale. In 21 out of 30 patients (70%), catatonic signs resolved with lora...

in life and beliefs should be considered at par with the functional variables. Thus how a patient judges the outcome and how the outcomes influences the health related quality of life is as important as clinician's judgement of prognosis. Hence considering a high prevalence (25%) of depression amongst the cancer patients we feel the presence of a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst alongwith the surgeo...