Catastrophic schizophrenia

In psychiatry, catastrophic schizophrenia or schizocaria is a rare and acute form of schizophrenia leading directly to a severe and unremitting chronic psychosis (the long term occurrence of psychosis ) and deterioration of the personality. Catastrophic schizophrenia has "an acute onset and rapid decline into a chronic state without remission".

History
Eugen Bleuler's son Manfred Bleuler described the elimination of what he called catastrophic schizophrenia by improved hospital care prior to the advent of antipsychotic medications. Catastrophic schizophrenia, which was the prototype for Kraepelin's dementia praecox, was characterized by an acute onset of a severe psychosis, followed with little improvement by a severe chronic psychosis lasting until death.

Recent studies
The outcome of a study by Luc Ciompi and Christian Müller in 1976 has shown that only 6 percent of schizophrenic patients were judged to be suffering from catastrophic schizophrenia.