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Catatonic, explained:

Catatonia is a medical emergency if severe (especially if the person stops eating or drinking).

Catatonia (or being catatonic) is a psychomotor syndrome — meaning it involves a disruption of movement and behavior that arises from a psychiatric, neurological, or medical condition. It’s not a disorder by itself but a state that can occur in various conditions such as schizophrenia, mood disorders (especially bipolar disorder and major depression), or medical/neurological illnesses.

Here’s a breakdown to help you understand it clearly:

What Catatonia Is

See a Psychiatrist and or a Neurologist for more information.

Catatonia is a state of psychomotor disturbance characterized by abnormal movements, behaviors, or postures. A person in a catatonic state may appear frozen, unresponsive, or oddly repetitive in their actions.

Common Symptoms (You Only Need 3 for Diagnosis)

According to the DSM-5, catatonia is diagnosed when three or more of the following symptoms are present:

Stupor — No psychomotor activity; not actively relating to the environment.

Catalepsy — Passive holding of a posture against gravity (e.g., arm remains raised when lifted).

Waxy flexibility — The person’s limbs stay in whatever position someone else places them.

Mutism — Little or no verbal response.

Negativism — Resistance to instructions or attempts to be moved.

Posturing — Voluntary assumption of bizarre or inappropriate postures.

Mannerisms — Odd, exaggerated actions of normal behavior.

Stereotypy — Repetitive, non-goal-directed movements (e.g., rocking, hand flapping).

Agitation — Excessive movement not influenced by external stimuli.

Grimacing — Strange facial expressions.

Echolalia — Mimicking another’s speech.

Echopraxia — Mimicking another’s movements.

Causes and Associated Conditions

See a Psychiatrist and or a Neurologist for more information.

Catatonia can occur with:

  • Schizophrenia (especially catatonic type)
  • Bipolar disorder (especially manic or mixed episodes)
  • Major depressive disorder
  • Neurological or medical conditions (e.g., encephalitis, metabolic disorders)
  • Substance use or withdrawal

Treatment

Catatonia is a medical emergency if severe (especially if the person stops eating or drinking).


 Common treatments include:

See a Psychiatrist and or a Neurologist for more information.

  • Treating the underlying condition (psychiatric or medical cause).

Example

A person with bipolar disorder may suddenly stop speaking, stay in one position for hours, and resist movement. Despite appearing “frozen,” they may still be aware of their surroundings, this is a catatonic episode.

Shervan K Shahhian

Catatonia, explained:

See a Psychiatrist and or a Neurologist for more information.

Catatonia is a neuropsychiatric syndrome that affects a person’s movement, behavior, and responsiveness. It can occur in various mental and medical conditions — most commonly in mood disorders (like bipolar disorder or major depression) and schizophrenia, but also due to neurological or medical causes (such as infections, metabolic problems, or drug reactions).

Core Features

Catatonia is characterized by a cluster of psychomotor signs — meaning abnormal or absent movement and speech patterns. According to the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), catatonia is diagnosed when three or more of the following symptoms are present:

  • Stupor: No psychomotor activity; not actively relating to the environment.
  • Catalepsy: Passive induction of a posture held against gravity (e.g., holding an unusual position for long periods).
  • Waxy flexibility: Slight, even resistance to positioning by the examiner, as if the body were made of wax.
  • Mutism: Little or no verbal response.
  • Negativism: Opposition or no response to instructions or external stimuli.
  • Posturing: Spontaneous maintenance of posture against gravity.
  • Mannerisms: Odd, exaggerated actions that seem purposeful.
  • Stereotypy: Repetitive, non-goal-directed movements (e.g., rocking, hand-flapping).
  • Agitation: Not influenced by external stimuli.
  • Grimacing: Fixed or inappropriate facial expressions.
  • Echolalia: Mimicking another’s speech.
  • Echopraxia: Mimicking another’s movements.

Types of Catatonia

  1. Retarded (Stuporous) Catatonia:
    The person is immobile, mute, and unresponsive, often appearing frozen or statue-like.
  2. Excited Catatonia:
    Marked by excessive, purposeless movement, agitation, and sometimes aggression.
  3. Malignant Catatonia:
    A severe, life-threatening form with autonomic instability (fever, high blood pressure, rapid heart rate) that requires emergency medical care.

Causes and Associated Conditions

Catatonia isn’t a diagnosis by itself—it’s a syndrome that can appear in:

  • Mood disorders (especially bipolar disorder)
  • Schizophrenia
  • Autism spectrum disorder
  • Medical or neurological illnesses (e.g., encephalitis, epilepsy, lupus)See a Psychiatrist and or a Neurologist for more information.
  • Substance withdrawal or intoxication

Treatment

See a Psychiatrist and or a Neurologist for more information.

Catatonia could be treatable, maybe when it is recognized early?

 Clinical Importance

Catatonia may appear puzzling or dramatic, but it’s a reversible condition when identified early. Left untreated, it can lead to dehydration, malnutrition, or even death (especially in malignant catatonia).

Shervan K Shahhian

Understanding different types of Catatonia:

Catatonia is a medical emergency if severe (especially if the person stops eating or drinking).

See a Psychiatrist and or a Neurologist for more information.

Catatonia isn’t just one single state, it’s a syndrome with several forms that can appear in different psychiatric, neurological, or medical conditions.

Here are the main types of catatonia, based on presentation and underlying features:

1. Retarded (Stuporous) Catatonia

This is the most common type and involves decreased movement and responsiveness.
Key features:

  • Mutism (not speaking)
  • Stupor (immobile, unresponsive but awake)
  • Waxy flexibility (limbs stay in positions placed by others)
  • Negativism (resistance to movement or instruction)
  • Posturing (holding odd positions for long periods)
  • Echolalia or echopraxia (repeating words or movements)

Often seen in major depression, schizophrenia, or medical illnesses (e.g., encephalitis, metabolic disorders).

2. Excited (Agitated) Catatonia

Characterized by excessive, purposeless, or frenzied motor activity.
Key features:

  • Hyperactivity or agitation
  • Verbigeration (repetition of meaningless words/phrases)
  • Impulsivity or combativeness
  • Stereotyped movements (repetitive gestures)
  • Sudden emotional outbursts

This type can rapidly switch between agitation and stupor and may be seen in mania, psychotic states, or toxic/metabolic conditions.

3. Malignant (Lethal) Catatonia

A life-threatening form with autonomic instability.
Key features:

  • Fever
  • Delirium or confusion
  • Elevated blood pressure, pulse, and respiration
  • Rigidity
  • Rapid progression to stupor or coma

Closely resembles neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) and requires emergency treatment.

4. Periodic or Recurrent Catatonia

  • Episodes of catatonia that recur intermittently over months or years.
  • Often linked to mood disorders or genetic susceptibility.

5. Atypical or Mixed Catatonia

  • Patients show a combination of retarded and excited features or shift between them.
  • Sometimes seen in bipolar disorder or schizoaffective states.

Shervan K Shahhian

Pinpointing Problematic Behavior: a Practical Guide:

 “Pinpointing Problematic Behavior: A Practical Guide”:

This guide is designed to help professionals, educators, leaders, and therapists recognize and understand behaviors that interfere with growth, relationships, or productivity. Problematic behaviors often show up subtly at first - through avoidance, resistance, aggression, or withdrawal - but if left unaddressed, they can escalate and create greater challenges.


Why it matters:


Identifying problematic behaviors early allows for timely intervention.
Understanding the underlying causes (stress, trauma, unmet needs, or environmental triggers) prevents mislabeling or overreacting.
Precise identification guides effective solutions, whether in therapy, education, or workplace leadership.

What the guide offers:
Observation Strategies - Practical steps for noticing patterns without bias.
Behavioral Context - Tools for distinguishing between situational reactions and persistent problems.
Checklists & Frameworks - Therapist- and leader-friendly methods to quickly assess behavior.
Root Cause Exploration - How to look beyond the surface to the psychological, emotional, or environmental drivers.
Intervention Pathways - Evidence-based approaches for responding in ways that de-escalate conflict and promote change.


Practical Use:
For therapists: A structured way to map out behaviors interfering with treatment progress.
For educators: Quick recognition of learning-related or disruptive behaviors in classrooms.
For workplace leaders: Identifying conduct that undermines collaboration and performance.

Here’s a general-purpose explanation of Pinpointing Problematic Behavior: A Practical Guide that works for everyday readers:


Pinpointing Problematic Behavior: A Practical Guide

Problematic behavior can show up in many areas of life - at home, school, work, or in personal relationships. It might look like constant arguing, avoidance of responsibilities, withdrawal, excessive criticism, or patterns of conflict that keep repeating. Left unchecked, these behaviors can damage trust, lower performance, or create unnecessary stress.


What this guide is about:
 This practical guide is designed to help people clearly recognize behaviors that are getting in the way of positive growth, healthy communication, and smooth daily life. The goal is not to label or blame but to understand what’s really happening and how to respond constructively.


Key elements of the guide:
Spotting Patterns - Learning how to notice recurring behaviors rather than isolated mistakes.
Understanding Context - Asking why the behavior shows up: is it stress, miscommunication, unmet needs, or something deeper?
Separating the Person from the Behavior - Recognizing that behavior can be changed without attacking someone’s character.
Practical Tools - Simple checklists and questions to help pinpoint the behavior quickly and accurately.
Steps Toward Solutions - Offering strategies for addressing the behavior in ways that encourage cooperation, growth, and mutual respect.


Why it matters:
 When we can pinpoint problematic behavior early and clearly, we can:
Prevent small issues from becoming bigger conflicts.
Improve communication and relationships.
Create healthier environments at home, school, and work.
Support personal growth and self-awareness.

Shervan K Shahhian

What is a Manic Episode:

A manic episode is a distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood accompanied by increased energy or activity. In psychiatry, it’s most often associated with Bipolar I Disorder, but it can also occur due to substances, medical conditions, or other mood disorders.

Here’s a clear breakdown:

Core Features of a Manic Episode

  • Duration: At least 1 week (or any duration if hospitalization is required).
  • Mood: Abnormally elevated, expansive, or irritable.
  • Activity/Energy: Abnormally increased, goal-directed activity or energy.

Symptoms:

  • Inflated self-esteem or grandiosity
  • Decreased need for sleep (e.g., feels rested after 3 hours)
  • More talkative or pressured speech
  • Flight of ideas or racing thoughts
  • Easily distracted
  • Increase in goal-directed activities (work, social, sexual) or psychomotor agitation
  • Excessive involvement in risky activities (spending sprees, sexual indiscretions, reckless investments)

Severity

  • Severe enough to cause marked impairment in social/occupational functioning, require hospitalization, or involve psychotic features.
  • Not attributable to substances use/abuse or another medical conditions.

Shervan K Shahhian

Applying Psychological science to legal questions, is great, why:

Psychological science is applied to legal questions because the law is fundamentally about people—how they think, feel, and behave. Psychology offers systematic methods to understand and explain human behavior, which helps the legal system make more accurate, fair, and effective decisions.

Some key reasons include:

  • Understanding behavior: Courts and juries often need to evaluate why people act the way they do (e.g., criminal intent, eyewitness testimony, memory reliability). Psychology provides evidence-based insight into these questions.
  • Improving legal processes: Research shows, for example, that eyewitness memory is fallible and that certain interrogation techniques can produce false confessions. Applying psychology helps refine procedures to reduce errors.
  • Assessing individuals: Psychologists assess competence to stand trial, risk of reoffending, mental state at the time of an offense, and treatment needs—issues directly tied to justice.
  • Policy and law development: Psychological findings inform how laws are written and enforced (e.g., understanding adolescent brain development has influenced juvenile justice policies).
  • Promoting fairness: Psychology helps identify biases in judges, juries, and legal procedures, supporting a more equitable justice system.

In short, psychology brings scientific knowledge about the mind and behavior into the legal arena, where decisions often hinge on questions about human thought, memory, emotion, and action.

Shervan K Shahhian

Legal Psychology, explained:

Legal psychology is a subfield of psychology that focuses on how psychological principles, methods, and research apply to the law and legal systems. It sits within the broader area of psychology and law and overlaps with forensic psychology, but it is not the same thing.

At its core, legal psychology is about understanding the human behavior, thought processes, and decision-making that play a role in legal contexts. It covers areas such as:

Eyewitness testimony — how accurate people’s memories are, what factors affect reliability, and how testimony can be influenced.

Jury decision-making — how jurors evaluate evidence, deliberate as a group, and what biases or heuristics may affect verdicts.

Police investigations and interrogations — studying false confessions, suspect interviews, and investigative decision-making.

Expert testimony — psychologists providing courts with specialized knowledge (e.g., about memory, risk assessment, or mental states).

Public policy and lawmaking — applying psychological research to improve laws and legal procedures.

Unlike forensic psychology, which is more clinical and often involves direct assessment of individuals (e.g., competency evaluations, risk of reoffending), legal psychology is more experimental and research-oriented, focusing on general psychological phenomena relevant to the legal system.

 In short: Legal psychology is the scientific study of how psychology interacts with the law — especially in areas like memory, decision-making, persuasion, and justice.

Shervan K Shahhian

What is Psychology and Law, what is it:

Psychology and Law - often called legal psychology - is the field that studies how psychological principles, theories, and methods apply within the legal and justice systems. It’s an interdisciplinary area that combines knowledge from psychology (how people think, feel, and behave) with law (rules, systems, and decision-making).


Here are the main aspects:
Understanding human behavior in legal contexts
 Psychologists study how people involved in the justice system - judges, juries, victims, witnesses, police, and offenders - think and act.


Eyewitness testimony
 Research explores how memory, stress, suggestion, and bias affect what witnesses recall, and how reliable their testimony is.

Jury decision-making
 Psychologists analyze how jurors form opinions, evaluate evidence, and are influenced by group dynamics or pretrial publicity.


Competency and responsibility
 Forensic psychologists assess whether someone is competent to stand trial, understands their legal rights, or was criminally responsible at the time of an offense.


Risk assessment and rehabilitation
 Psychology helps courts and corrections estimate the likelihood of reoffending and design programs to reduce future crime.


Police and investigative psychology
 Involves profiling, interrogation methods, and understanding decision-making under pressure.


Child custody and family law
 Psychologists may provide evaluations to guide decisions about children’s best interests.

In short: Psychology and Law aims to improve justice by applying psychological science to legal questions.


Shervan K Shahhian

Legal Psychology, explained:

Understanding the field of Legal psychology more generally recognized as “psychology and law”:

Legal psychology, also known as psychology and law, is an interdisciplinary field that combines principles of psychology and the legal system. It encompasses the application of psychological research, theories, and methods to various aspects of the legal process, including the study of human behavior, cognition, and decision-making in legal contexts.

Legal psychology encompasses a wide range of topics and areas of study, including:

Eyewitness Testimony: Research in this area examines the accuracy and reliability of eyewitness testimony, factors that influence memory, and techniques for improving eyewitness identification procedures.

Interrogations and Confessions: Legal psychologists study the psychological processes underlying interrogations and confessions, including the impact of interrogation techniques, false confessions, and the role of suggestibility.

Jury Decision-Making: This area explores how jurors process and evaluate evidence, the influence of pretrial publicity and bias on jury decision-making, and the effectiveness of different trial strategies.

Police Psychology: Legal psychologists may work with law enforcement agencies to evaluate officer selection and training methods, assess the psychological impact of police work, and provide expertise in areas such as hostage negotiation and crisis intervention.

Legal Competence and Mental Health: Legal psychologists assess the mental competence of individuals involved in legal proceedings, such as defendants’ competency to stand trial or witnesses’ competency to testify. They also examine the relationship between mental health and legal outcomes.

Juvenile Justice: This area focuses on understanding the psychological development of children and adolescents involved in the legal system, including issues related to juvenile offenders, child custody evaluations, and interventions for at-risk youth.

Risk Assessment and Forensic Evaluation: Legal psychologists may conduct risk assessments and forensic evaluations to assess the likelihood of future dangerous behavior, evaluate offenders’ mental health, or provide expert testimony on psychological issues in legal cases.

Legal Decision-Making: Legal psychology examines the decision-making processes of judges, attorneys, and other legal professionals, exploring factors that may influence judgments, biases, and the impact of legal reforms.

Legal psychologists can work in a variety of settings, including academic institutions, research organizations, government agencies, law enforcement, forensic facilities, and private practice. Their work often involves conducting research, providing expert testimony, consulting with legal professionals, and developing policies and interventions to improve the legal system.

Overall, legal psychology aims to bridge the gap between psychology and the law by applying psychological principles to enhance our understanding of legal phenomena and contribute to the development of more effective and fair legal practices.

Shervan K Shahhian

Bipolar Disorder (mania/mixed states), explained:

Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder marked by episodes of depression and episodes of elevated or irritable mood. The two relevant poles; mania and mixed states — are key features:

Mania

A manic episode is a distinct period (at least 1 week, or any duration if hospitalization is required) of abnormally elevated, expansive, or irritable mood, along with increased energy/activity.
 Typical features include:

  • Inflated self-esteem or grandiosity
  • Decreased need for sleep (feels rested after 3 hours)
  • Pressured speech, talking more than usual
  • Flight of ideas or racing thoughts
  • Distractibility
  • Increased goal-directed activity or psychomotor agitation
  • Risky or impulsive behaviors (e.g., reckless spending, sexual indiscretions, substance use)

Severe mania can lead to psychosis (delusions, hallucinations) and often requires hospitalization.

Mixed States (Mixed Features)

A mixed state (or “with mixed features”) means symptoms of both mania/hypomania and depression occur at the same time or in very rapid shifts.
 Examples:

  • Depressed mood + racing thoughts
  • Low energy + high agitation
  • Suicidal thinking + impulsive risk-taking
  • Irritability and anxiety alongside manic drive

These states are especially dangerous, as the combination of impulsivity and despair can increase risk of suicidal behavior, Crisis support: Please Get Immediate help if suicidal (911 in the US, or 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline).

Key Points Clinically

  • Bipolar I Disorder: Defined by at least one manic episode (often with depressive episodes).
  • Bipolar II Disorder: Defined by hypomanic (less severe than mania, no psychosis) and depressive episodes.
  • Mixed states can occur in either type.
  • Medical treatments: See a Psychiatrist
  • Psychotherapy (psychoeducation, CBT, family-focused therapy) and lifestyle regulation (sleep, stress, routines) are also crucial.

Shervan K Shahhian