I CANT MOVE?! | Catatonic Disorders | Debunking DID Ep 13 | DissociaDID | RE-UPLOAD

Hello everybody, welcome back to Dissociated. This is a channel that tries to destigmatize dissociative identity disorder and debunks all the inaccurate connotations and stigmas that come alongside it. This is going to be a debunking DID video which means that all the sources that I've used will be linked down below in the description box as we encourage you to go and do some more research yourself if you are interested in this stuff. You don't need to just take our word for it but everything that we're saying today has been taken from scientifically vetted studies. I've been doing this channel for over a year now and during that time I've made a lot of different videos about symptoms that can come with DID and the comorbid disorders that can affect it. If you don't know what comorbid means, it essentially means that if two disorders are comorbid it means that they often occur together. For example, anxiety is often comorbid with depression. Essentially if you have one of these disorders it's very likely that you'll have the other. Not in all cases but that's essentially what comorbid means. A higher likelihood that if you have this disorder that you'll also be experiencing this disorder as well. So even though on this channel I've made a lot of videos about different types of disorders and comorbidity and symptoms that can come alongside DID and the disorders that may often appear alongside it, I've never heard anybody speaking about catatonia in relation to DID or depression. That's what this video is going to be about. I don't think that it's a disorder that's very well known and I think that it's important to bring some light to it. If you experience catatonia or go into a catatonic state or witness somebody else doing it, if you don't know what's going on that can be a very intensely frightening experience. So if you experience catatonic depression, catatonic schizophrenia, catatonic mood disorders or even catatonic dissociation then this video is for you. If you're just interested and would like to learn more, please stay because that's exactly what I'm going to be talking to you about today. Okay, let's get into the video. My experience of catatonic dissociation and catatonic depression is something that doesn't happen too regularly but when it does it happens to a very extreme level. Catatonic symptoms were first described by Carl Ludwig Carlbaum and this was in 1874. His description of individuals with catatonic behaviour remains accurate to this day. He mainly described catatonia as a disorder characterised by unusual motor symptoms. There are two different types of catatonic states. Catatonia causes severe disturbances in motor behaviour. Some people may show extreme motor behaviour and be very very active and others will be extremely unreactive. This is often categorised by how mobile the patient is. The most common or most well known form of catatonia is catatonic schizophrenia. Most of symptoms that develop with catatonic schizophrenia are also mirrored in different kinds of catatonia such as depression with catatonic features or dissociative catatonia too. If you have mood disorders, especially bipolar, you may also have some catatonic symptoms. One of the most intense and obvious symptoms of catatonia is extreme immobility. Somebody may be completely unreactive to whatever you're doing to them. For example, recently I went into a catatonic state after being triggered and my partner was squeezing my hands, touching my face, hugging me, putting cold things on my face. Even though I could feel this and I wanted to react to it, I could not move. I was completely immobile. If I was moved, I would stay in the same position I had been put in no matter how uncomfortable or painful that position was. This condition is known as waxy flexibility. If somebody moves you and you retain the position that you've been put in, that's waxy flexibility. However, someone experiencing catatonic symptoms may actually exhibit extreme negativism which means that they will resist all attempts to be moved or any instructions or requests to move or react without any apparent motivation or awareness. In some people there may be extremely heightened motor activity such as wanting to run around, extreme activity, but this often seems bizarre and without any particular purpose or awareness to it. And on the other hand, other patients may experience catatonic stupor. This is characterized by extremely slow movements and being unaware of your surroundings, often to the point of being completely motionless and not reacting to any kind of external stimulation. So to summarize, some people with catatonia may be extremely motionless, not react to any outside or external stimuli, whereas others will move around in drastic and seemingly random vigorous fashions. Symptoms can include extreme negativism, selective mutism, peculiar movements, imitating someone else's words or phrases or accents. As you may have seen in my videos where I have visited my partner who lives in America, I very quickly picked up on their accent. Personally, I think this is more of an empathetic thing. I seem to mirror people's movements and accents in a way that makes me seem less threatening, more trustworthy and safer. It's not something that I do intentionally, it's just something that seems to happen. This is called echolalia and echoing movements is called echopraxia. These may also be part of the symptomatic picture that reflects catatonia. Whether you are catatonic schizophrenic, catatonic depressive, or have a mood disorder with catatonic symptoms. As an example of how this may affect somebody with, for example, let's say depression with catatonic symptoms, a severely depressed person may experience extreme emotional pain from even slight movements like moving a finger. Even getting up out of a chair or lifting themselves from a bed can be an extremely painful and difficult experience that reflects the emotional pain that they're feeling from their depression. Generally, this is tied in and in order to treat catatonia or catatonic symptoms, these are just symptoms and they need to be treated as per the underlying cause. For example, in this case, that would be depression. The way to treat catatonia is to deal with the underlying issue. Therefore, there is no specific treatments just for catatonic symptoms in themselves in the same way as there is no specific treatment for dissociative identity disorder. So, a quick rundown of some other symptoms that may affect people with catatonia or disorders with catatonia relevant to them. First and foremost, the most obvious is catalepsy, which is being motionless for a long period of time. Catatonic excitement, the extreme and seemingly pointless amounts of movement that can be very bizarre-seeming, very intense. Catatonic stupor, this is the marked slow motor responses. Motor activity slowed down to almost the point of immobility and no reaction to external stimuli. This includes being unaware of the external environment that this individual has been placed in. Catatonic rigidity, in which a person assumes a position and will resist any attempts to move them from that position. Catatonic posturing, where somebody maintains a seemingly bizarre posture or body language and will hold it for a long time, no matter how inappropriate or strange it seems to be, and they will maintain this posture for an extended period of time. You can see this most often in people with catatonic schizophrenia. Waxy flexibility, in which case the person can be moved and they will hold the position that they have been placed in, particularly if you were to move someone's limb or something like that. So if you put my arm up there and then let go, it would stay. It has been described as though to an observer that body part will seem to have been made of wax, hence the phrase waxy flexibility. And akinesia, or absence of physical movement. If you have bipolar, you may be able to see some of these symptoms pop up when you are in a manic phase, for example the hypermobility, moving around very intensely. Catatonic excitement may appear during your manic phases, and catatonic stupor in your lower ones. Catatonic symptoms often occur in people with depression when they are at their very very lowest state, the biggest dip in their mood, usually when experiencing things such as suicidal ideation. Okay, so now we know what catatonia is. What about the demographics? According to the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, between 9 and 5% of all psychiatric inpatients show some symptoms of catatonia. Of these, 25 to 50% are associated with mood disorders, 10 to 15% are associated with schizophrenia, and the remainder are associated with other mental health disorders. Catatonic symptoms don't just come with mental disorders though, they can also occur in a wide variety of different medical conditions, including infectious, metabolic, and neurological disorders. They can also present as side effects of different drugs, especially if those drugs have been abused. So I hope that this gives you an idea of something that you may not have known anything about before. If you are interested in learning more about catatonia, or catatonic schizophrenia, catatonia alongside mood disorders, catatonic depression, catatonic dissociation, please check out all the links to the studies and the resources that we have collected for you down below in the description box. I really hope that you found this information to be collated in a way that's relatively easy to understand, and that maybe you learned something today. If you have any questions, as always please leave a comment down below. We do our best to answer as many as we can, and if not, our wonderful community is there and somebody will answer you. This community is amazing and we are so so grateful for everybody in our little dissociated family. So please subscribe if you want to learn more about disorders like this, and especially dissociative identity disorder, which is what this channel is about. Don't forget to check out our new merch designs. I designed them all by hand on pen and paper. They're mine. I did them. I hope you like them. Spread messages of mental health awareness. Have a wonderful day. Lots of love everybody. Bye! Bless me. Sorry.