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Development of the Autistic Catatonia Questionaire
A catatonic presentation manifesting in early to mid-adolescence is reported in about 8% of people with autism spectrum disorders, with core features of being very still for long periods of time, getting ‘stuck’ when trying to do something, difficultly stopping actions once they have been started, difficulties in initiating actions, moving very slowly and taking a long time to finish actions and requiring physical and /or verbal prompts in order to complete actions. To date, little is known about the aetiology, phenomenology and course of such ‘autistic catatonia’, a state of affairs that isexacerbated by the current lack of appropriate clinical and research assessment tools.
Objectives:
In order to facilitate objective clinical and research work into the nature and treatment of “autistic catatonia”, the initial aim of the current study was to develop a psychometrically sound third-party observational assessment of catatonic symptoms as presenting in people with ASD.
Methods:
The 34-item Autistic Catatonia Questionnaire (ACQ) was developed from extant reports of autistic catatonia and measures of catatonic symptomatology and comprises six core features of autistic catatonia and an additional 28 items covering other aspects of repetitive, motoric and sensory functioning. Items are scored for presence, frequency and severity. Preliminary ACQ data, together with data from the Repetitive Behaviour Scale and the Glasgow Depression Scales and relevant demographic and contextual information, was obtained from relatives and supporters of adolescents and young adults with ASD living in the United Kingdom
Results:
Date from the relatives and supporters of 99 participants with a diagnosis of ASD aged between 12-25 years ACQ data were initially coded to obtain core autistic catatonia score, core severity score and core frequency scores. Preliminary data analysis indicated the six core symptoms were relatively common in the sample, with a mean of 2.38 symptoms being reported and 85% of participants displaying least one core symptoms either currently or in the past. Mean core autistic catatonia score was 7.48, with those with existing catatonia diagnoses having significantly higher numbers of core symptoms and core frequency scores. GDS-LD scores were correlated with the number of core symptoms and the core autistic catatonia score
Conclusions:
The preliminary data suggest that the ACQ shows promise as a valid and easy to use tool for the clinical and research assessment of autistic catatonia. Further work is on-going to examine the reliability of the measure and to investigate the relationship of catatonic symptomatology as measured by the ACQ with actigraphically assessed activity levels and circadian functioning.