Movement disorders in catatonia

A Case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Presenting as Catatonia

“…1 The differential diagnosis of catatonia includes psychiatric and neurological conditions. We present a case of a man initially diagnosed with catatonia and treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) who was referred for neuropsychiatric opinion following acute deterioration.…”

“…Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria for probable sCJD require rapidly progressive dementia with 2 or more of the following: myoclonus, visual or cerebellar symptoms, pyramidal or extrapyramidal symptoms, or akinetic mutism, along with 1 or more positive findings on EEG (periodic sharp wave complexes), CSF (positive 14-3-3 protein), or MRI. 1 Psychiatric symptoms including mood disturbance, behavioral disturbance, or psychosis may feature early in younger patients. 3 Promising new tests with high sensitivity and specificity using CSF, 4 nasal brushings (sCJD), 5 or urine (variant CJD) 6 have been recently described.…”

Movement Disorders in the Intensive Care Unit

“…29 It is characterized by three or more of the following: catalepsy, waxy flexibility, stupor, mutism, negativism, and posturing (hypokinetic features), and mannerisms, stereotypies, grimacing, echolalia, echopraxia, and agitation (hyperkinetic features). 29,30 The treatment of patients with catatonia consists of pharmacological (benzodiazepines, NMDA antagonists) and nonpharmacological (electroconvulsive therapy) approaches. In the critical care setting, catatonia may be induced by a combination of acute illness and changes to the patient's home medications, or by withdrawal from antipsychotic medications used for agitation in a patient who has no history of psychiatric disease.…”

Speech and voice disorders in patients with psychogenic movement disorders

“…In his remarkable book, Fox (1914) viewed hysterical mutism as a form of systematized paralysis in some cases associated to emotional excitement, psychic deafness, or compensation during organic dysphonia with speech arrest and stuttering [5]. Another condition frequently associated with mutism and other speech and voice problems, often wrongly diagnosed as PMD, is catatonia [6]. Thus, it is possible that some of the original cases of ''hysterical mutism'' may have had catatonia.…”