Catatonia in Children and Teens

Psychiatry & Psychotherapy Podcast

David J Puder

Science, Health & Fitness, Medicine

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Catatonia in children and teens is underdiagnosed, frequently misunderstood, and potentially fatal if left untreated. In this episode, Dr. David Puder and Dr. Annabel Kuhn interview Dr. Joshua Ryan Smith—child and adolescent psychiatrist and division director at Vanderbilt University—to explore the essential clinical skills and medical knowledge needed to identify and treat pediatric catatonia.

You’ll learn how to differentiate catatonia from other neuropsychiatric conditions in both neurodivergent and neurotypical children, how to apply tools like the Bush-Francis and Pediatric Catatonia Rating Scales. This episode also unpacks common misdiagnoses in cases involving autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, and autoimmune or metabolic conditions. Finally, it offers practical, evidence-based guidance for both inpatient stabilization and outpatient follow-up care.

Whether you’re a psychiatrist, pediatrician, therapist, or student, this episode offers life-saving insights into one of the most overlooked syndromes in child psychiatry.

By listening to this episode, you can earn 1.0 Psychiatry CME Credits.

Link to blog.

Link to YouTube video.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Music
0:14.0	Welcome back to the podcast.
0:15.0	I am joined today with Annabelle Cune, MD, fellow in Boston, child psychiatry, also with
0:21.9	Joshua Ryan Smith.
0:22.9	He is a CNL child and adolescent psychiatrist who has published on Catatonia and autism.
0:31.4	And today we are going to be talking about both and mostly Catatonia.
0:36.3	And so yeah, welcome to the podcast.
0:38.3	Thank you.
0:39.3	I appreciate the invitation.
0:40.3	Yeah, I was enjoying listening to your YouTube the other day and just for someone jumping in,
0:46.5	what is Catatonia, what are the general symptoms and then what are the specific symptoms we see
0:52.5	in autistic patients? Sure, so Catatonia was described in the late 1800s by call-bomb initially
1:02.6	and it was described as this sort of
1:05.2	stuporist tension insanity.
1:06.8	And they also described fluctuating levels
1:10.8	of psychomotor activity, right?
1:12.2	I think that's like a hallmark of Catatonia
1:14.3	where people have either hypoeactive symptomatology
1:18.6	or they have hyperactive symptomatology.
1:21.5	And it is a syndrome in the sense
1:24.6	that Catatonia always occurs in the setting of something else. The analogy I give to parents
1:28.8	and families is that catatonia is like fever, right? Like you have a fever. We don't really
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from David J Puder, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of David J Puder and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.