The occurrence of psychoses in children was formerly considered to be rare. This has been disproved by more recent investigations.1 Even today most physicians when dealing with psychoses in children and adolescents usually think only in terms of the affective psychoses, such as schizophrenia. However, many psychotic episodes which occur in children are definitely of the nature of toxic psychoses. Very often these occur during or following the course of an acute infectious disease, such as measles or pertussis. As a result, the basis for the psychotic manifestations was thought to be an associated encephalitis.
However, more recent pathologic investigations have shown that these episodes are not necessarily the result of an inflammatory process in the brain but may be due to degenerative cerebral changes. Hence, instead of "the encephalitides," the term "encephalopathy" was introduced. Jochims,2 in 1928, first used the term "pertussis encephalopathy" to describe the degenerative