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Abstract
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The incidence of psychiatric disorders in burned patients before they receive their injury is high; this is one reason why these persons get burned. Until this background is appreciated, no realistic measure of the psychiatric effects of burns can be made.
Burns are among the largest wounds people receive and treatment is frightening and uncomfortable, so it is not surprising that this stress, sometimes imposed on people who are already disturbed, can produce further mental and emotional disorders. Some of the psychological effects relate to basic fears about survival, but they merge with secondary attitudes and adaptive reactions to the accident, the burn injury and the people around.
Disorders of the mind in burned patients frequently have a medical cause, such as water intoxication, renal failure or septicaemia. Treatment for these conditions is not psychiatric; it is medical, and often urgent. These cases should not be labelled toxic psychosis and referred with some delay for the opinion of a psychiatric specialist.Emotional disorders in children following burns are common and as much a complication of faulty management, such as lack of visiting by the mother, as of the burn itself. They should therefore be regarded as preventable suffering.
The psychological effects of burns have had little attention in the past, but those interested may study it in the work of Cobb and Lindemann (1943) and Adler (1943) on the victims of the Coconut Grove Disaster; Hamburg et al. (1953) from the Brooke Army Hospital; and Woodward (1959, 1962), Woodward and Jackson (1961), Long and Cope (1961), Vigliano et al. (1964) and Martin (1970a,b) on psychiatric effects of burns in children and their parents. |