Excited delirium: what’s the evidence for its use in medicine?

What is it?

That’s a complicated question. In 2009 the American College of Emergency Physicians formally recognised excited delirium as a unique syndrome.3 A taskforce on the topic appointed by the college said that the term “had been used to refer to a subcategory of delirium that has primarily been described retrospectively in the medical examiner literature.”4

A literature review by the taskforce found that people with excited delirium were commonly hyperaggressive with bizarre behaviour, impervious to pain, combative, hyperthermic, and tachycardic. “There is typically a struggle with law enforcement that involves physical, noxious chemical, or [electrical control device] use followed by a period of quiet and sudden death,” the …