Donkin psychosis

Donkin psychoses are eclamptic psychoses without seizures. As symptomatic psychoses resulting from cerebral endothelial damage, they may explain the lucid intervals that sometimes occur between eclampsia and the eruption of psychosis. They have the same features as eclamptic psychoses, with onset during pregnancy or the early puerperium, especially in first-time mothers, a short duration and full recovery in most. The clinical picture is usually delirium, but mania is also seen, and some patients have retrograde amnesia or other cognitive defects. Donkin psychosis should be considered in the differential diagnosis of childbearing psychoses, and collaborative research is needed to clarify their differences.