Catatonia: prediction of response to somatic treatments

The authors investigated predictors of somatic treatment response in 55 patients with one or more of eight catatonic motor features. Responders more often had good prognostic signs, rapid or pressured speech, and diagnosable affective disorder or alcoholism. Nonresponders were younger at age of onset of first illness and were more frequently disoriented; they included all patients diagnosed as schizophrenic. The authors suggest that treatment response in catatonia is a function of primary diagnosis and that the syndrome is diagnostically nonspecific but occurs most often in patients with affective disorders.