Catatonic schizophrenia is a disturbed mental state of mind, in which repetitive and purposeless overactive or negativism can involve. Prominent psychomotor disturbances are essential and dominant.
Catatonic Schizophrenia Symptoms
Catatonic schizophrenia symptoms involves three or more of the following:
Catatonia Stupor
Catatonic stupor is no reaction to your environment. It means that the person will unable to speak, move or respond and this can last for hours or days if left untreated.
Catalepsy
It is a rigid posture without reacting to your environment. It is a type of medical situation in which the suffering person can experience loss of sensation and consciousness accompanied by the rigidity of the body.
Waxy flexibility
It is a small but even resistance to positioning. So, if somebody were to move your hands and there would be an even resistance against them, no matter how they try to move will be waxy flexibility
Mutism
Mutism is a situation in catatonic schizophrenia symptoms when there is very little or no verbal responses and this is not aphasia. Aphasia is an inability to understand speech due to brain damage, so mutism is different from that.
Negativism
Which is opposition or no response to instructions or external stimuli posturing which is spontaneous and active maintenance of a posture without reacting to your environment.
Mannerism
It is a odd caricature of normal movements
Stereotyping
which is repetitive, unusual, frequent, non goal-directed movements
Agitation
Agitated catatonia is also referred to as self-injurious behavior
Grimacing
It is a facial contour contortion
Echolalia
Echolalia is copying or mimicking someone else’s speech
Echopraxia
It is copying or mimicking somebody else’s movements.
So if three or more of any of those constitutes catatonia
Something to note about catatonic schizophrenia is that the person who’s experiencing it may harm themselves or others. When there’s a more severe form of catatonia going on and because there’s these rigid and fixed movements there could be a risk of malnutrition exhaustion or hyperpyrexia which is an extremely high fever.
Read more about the the types of schizophrenia
