Effect of Epinephrine on the Adrenocortical Activity of Psychotic Patients

Group (10, 12) indicates that there is a lower level of adrenocortical response in chronic schizophrenic patients to such stresses as: 1) the pursuit-meter, 2) the Target-ball frustra-tion test, 3) ACTH, and 4) the Exton-Rose oral glucose tolerance test. On the basis of their data, they inferred that the patients were suffering from a "relative hypoadrenalism." This hypothesis seems to be contradicted by the work of Parsons et al. They found that both normals and psychotics responded with a lymphocytopenia of about the same magnitude, similar to that resulting from in-sulin and electroshock treatment. Since lym-phocytopenia is believed to be one of the pituitary-adrenocortical responses to stress (4), they concluded that the adrenocortical activ-ity of the psychotic individual was adequate in its response to physiological stresses but diminished in its reaction to psychological stresses. Recently Altschule et al. showed that the response of the adrenal cortex to ACTH in schizophrenic or depressed patients was com-parable to that of psychoneurotic patients.