About The Catatonia Foundation

The Catatonia Foundation (TCF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to improving recognition, access to treatment, and outcomes for individuals with catatonia across the lifespan.

Catatonia is a serious but treatable neuropsychiatric syndrome that occurs in mood disorders, psychotic disorders, autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders, medical conditions, and other settings. Despite well-established, first-line treatments — including benzodiazepines and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) — catatonia remains widely under-recognized and inconsistently treated across psychiatric and medical environments. TCF works to close this gap through clinician education, research collaboration, patient education, patient advocacy education, and long-term systems change.

Our mission is to work toward a future in which every person with catatonia receives timely recognition and appropriate first-line treatment. We develop accessible, clinically grounded educational resources for clinicians and families, providing practical guidance on recognition, diagnosis, and treatment considerations. We engage residency programs, professional organizations, and interdisciplinary healthcare teams to strengthen training and increase clinical confidence in identifying the full spectrum of presentations of catatonia across inpatient, outpatient, emergency, pediatric, geriatric, and general medical settings. In collaboration with psychiatrists, neurologists, emergency physicians, pediatric specialists, and researchers, TCF works to identify persistent knowledge gaps and structural barriers to care, and to translate those findings into targeted educational initiatives, clinician resources, and collaborative dialogue.

We are working to improve clarity and consistency in terminology, encourage stronger integration of catatonia education into mainstream psychiatric training, and promote improved data collection to better understand prevalence, presentation, and outcomes.