Corticosteroid Responses to Milieu Therapy of Chronic Schizophrenics

Abstract

OVER the past two decades, it has been well established in both animals and man that emotional distress can stimulate adrenal cortical activity through neuroendocrine pathways. In man, however, emotional distress is regarded as being closely regulated by ego defenses (in a manner perhaps analogous to a buffer system). It appears useful, then, to study both the dimensions of affect state and ego defensive functions as a system, in psychoendocrine investigations in man. This paper will report on corticosteroid excretion in four chronic schizophrenic men during a year's course of intensive milieu therapy. Changes in affect state and in corticosteroid excretion will be related to alterations in the psychosocial equilibrium maintained by these chronic patients. The present study grows out of previous work by Sachar et al^1,3,4 which described changes in corticosteroid excretion in acutely schizophrenic men as they moved through clinical phases in their