Case Report
Year: 2017 | Month: September | Volume: 7 | Issue: 9 | Pages: 307-310
Chronic Psychogenic Cough in an Adult Patient of Schizophrenia
Dr. Himanshu Sharma1, Dr. Siddharth Thaker2
1Professor & HOD, 2Ex-Senior Resident,
Department of Psychiatry, Pramukhswami Medical College, Shree Krishna Hospital, Karamsad, Dist: Anand, Gujarat, India.
Corresponding Author: Dr. Himanshu Sharma
ABSTRACT
Psychogenic cough is a chronic debilitating condition commonly seen in children. Although many such case reports are published in paediatric literature, there are few cases reported in adult population. We have reported one such clinical presentation in an adult male with an established diagnosis of schizophrenia who presented to our Hospital Psychiatry OPD with a complaint of chronic persistent cough for four years for which he had consulted many physicians and had gone through various investigations and received multiple courses of anti-histaminics, antibiotics and oral steroids without any improvement and remained undiagnosed. After admission a diagnosis of psychogenic cough was made after ruling out every possible underlying medical condition, and was treated with sessions of suggestion therapy and relaxation techniques along with pharmacologic treatment like antipsychotics and anxiolytics to ameliorate his current psychopathological status. After few sessions of suggestion therapy, he was relieved from his ailment. This case report is an attempt to bring a clinician’s attention to consider the possibility of psychogenic cough as a cause of chronic cough in adult patients as they usually present to a physician instead of a psychiatrist.
Key words: Psychogenic cough, chronic cough, adult patient, schizophrenia