A Comparison of the Physiological Functioning of Normals and Psychiatric Patients
- 1 August 1964
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Psychological Reports
- Vol. 15 (1), 183-187
- https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1964.15.1.183
Abstract
The present study was undertaken to investigate the relationship between acute severe psychological condition and physiological functioning at rest and during stress. Measures of autonomic functioning were taken at rest and under three experimental stress conditions. Comparing 30 male acute psychotic patients on an open psychiatric ward of a Veterans Administration Hospital with 27 normal male college students, the results show that (a) patients gave evidence of significantly higher heart rate and respiration rate at rest, and (b) students showed significantly greater galvanic skin response during all three stress situations. Respiration rate and heart rate failed to differentiate between the two samples under stress. These results suggest an impairment, in the psychiatric patients, in the physiological mechanism responsible for giving rise to the galvanic skin response.This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit:
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