Physiologic Studies of Reaction to Stress in Anxiety and Early Schizophrenia

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Abstract
Psychiatric patients were studied under stressful conditions in order to observe their behavioral and physiologic reactions. The patients fell into the following 3 groups: anxiety-patient group, mixed patient group, and early schizophrenic group, composed of 36, 28 and 11 patients, respectively. There was also a control group of 11 normal individuals. The stress situation involved 12 painful thermal stimuli of fixed order and intensity. The following physiologic measures were recorded: EEG from right parietal and frontal leads; EMG from the neck muscles; EKG, Lead II; finger movements; respiration; and GSR by means of an Esterline-Angus recording milliam-meter. Careful behavior notes were taken throughout the expt. It was found that, in general, severity of anxiety was related to degree of physiologic disturbance, and that the more severe the anxiety the greater the overreaction to pain stimuli. Pathological anxiety thus seems associated with a heightened state of expectation. Striate muscle activity such as finger movement and neck muscle potentials gave the clearest index of the correspondence between degree of anxiety and degree of physiologic disturbance under stress. The physiologic reactions of the early schizophrenic group resembled those of the most anxious group more closely than of any other.

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