Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Catatonia
/ˌkætəˈtoʊniə/noun
A state marked by immobility, rigidity or purposeless movement, with unresponsiveness to surroundings.
The Greek roots
κατά
katá
down, throughout
τόνος
tónos
tension, stretching
Literally: “tension throughout”
The story of the word
Karl Kahlbaum named it in 1874 in a monograph he called Die Katatonie, treating it as a disease in its own right and translating his own term into German as tension insanity. Kraepelin folded it into dementia praecox and it spent a century filed under schizophrenia. Current practice has gone back to Kahlbaum: catatonia is recognised across many diagnoses, medical as well as psychiatric, and it often responds within hours to a benzodiazepine.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → German → English
- First recorded
- 1870s
Same family
tonetonicmonotonecataloguecatastrophe
In a sentence
He sat in catatonia for three days, holding whatever position the nurses left him in.