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New medical recommendations regarding “excited delirium,” a contentious term linked to deaths in police custody, are being expedited for release before the original date of October 2025, as reported by The BMJ.
Recent developments suggest a shift in attitudes towards the use of this term, notes journalist Chris Stokel-Walker. For example, Colorado recently joined California in prohibiting the use of “excited delirium” by police, medical professionals, and coroners, while the UK Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) has eliminated the term from its incident reports.
The term ”excited delirium” was coined by two Miami doctors in the 1980s, but subsequent investigations have failed to establish a solid medical basis for its inclusion in medical terminology.
Despite this, both “excited delirium” and the UK’s more common term “acute behavioral disturbance” (ABD) have been cited as causes of death or contributing factors in 44 cases of police restraint in the UK since 2005, according to a joint study by Inquest, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and the Observer published in March 2024.
A study from July 2023 revealed a steady increase in references to ABD in mental health records at a London NHS trust between 2006 and 2021.
Experts like James MacCabe, a professor at King’s College London, and Catherine Polling, an NIHR clinical lecturer at the same institution, argue against the use of these terms, emphasizing their absence from standard diagnostic manuals.
2024-05-15 19:51:02
Link from phys.org