Catatonia as a debut of systemic lupus erythematosus: a case report on a diagnostic challenge

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disorder characterized by a wide variety of symptoms, including frequent neurological and psychiatric symptomatology. Psychiatric symptoms encountered in SLE are frequent, between 37 and 95% of SLE patients present them, can appear at any point in the course of the disease and may include almost any type of disorder. We present the case of a 32-year-old woman who presented an SLE debut with catatonic symptoms without previous psychiatric history, representing a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge given that the diagnosis was initially wrongly filtered out and required up to three hospital admissions in a row to reach a proper diagnosis and treatment.