Why the study?
Does acute severe psychological condition alter autonomic physiological functioning at rest and during stress compared to normal individuals?
Does acute severe psychological condition alter autonomic physiological functioning at rest and during stress compared to normal individuals?
Acute psychotic patients exhibit altered autonomic functioning, with higher resting heart and respiration rates but impaired galvanic skin response during stress compared to normal individuals.
Autonomic changes in acute psychosis merit monitoring but should not yet alter care; hypothesis-generating for stress biomarkers in psychiatric research.
The present study was undertaken to investigate the relationship between acute severe psychological condition and physiological functioning at rest and during stress. Measures of autonomic functioning were taken at rest and under three experimental stress conditions. Comparing 30 male acute psychotic patients on an open psychiatric ward of a Veterans Administration Hospital with 27 normal male college students, the results show that (a) patients gave evidence of significantly higher heart rate and respiration rate at rest, and (b) students showed significantly greater galvanic skin response during all three stress situations. Respiration rate and heart rate failed to differentiate between the two samples under stress. These results suggest an impairment, in the psychiatric patients, in the physiological mechanism responsible for giving rise to the galvanic skin response.
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L. L. Berger (1964) studied this question.
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