The Relationship of Muscle Tension and Autonomic Activity to Psychiatric Disorders

Physiologic recordings of palmar resistance, respiration rate, heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle action potentials in seven different skeletal muscles were recorded among psychiatric patients and normal persons during a resting state and in response to a white noise. Results showed that these patients, all in the early stages of illness, responded at physiologic levels which were at least as high as those of the normals. Psychotic and depressive disorders were two types of mal-adjustment characterized by exaggerated physiologic responses. This was particularly true for the skeletal muscles in response to the auditory stimulus.