Assessment of Psychomotor Performance of Under-therapy Patients Suffering from Schizophrenia with Healthy Volunteers

Abstract

Patients suffering from psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia and depression usually exhibit impaired psychomotor performance. Drug therapy can also affect their psychomotor performance. Therefore, present study was conducted to assess the psychomotor performance of such cases so that if there is any impairment, it can be detected, using battery of psychometric tests. In the present study, 20 schizophrenia patients taking drug therapy for not less than six months were compared with 20 healthy volunteers. Various objective tests included were: six digit cancellation test (SDCT), digit symbol substitution test (DSST), arithmetic ability test (AA), immediate recall test (IRT) and finger tapping test (FTT). Three different visual analog scales were used for subjective assessment. On objective psychometric tests, performance of schizophrenics was significantly impaired in comparison to healthy volunteers. But significant difference was not observed between both the groups on all the three visual analog scales. Subjectively, patients indicated the sense of wellbeing but on objective parameters they substantially lag behind healthy volunteers. It is suggested that patients should be advised to take adequate precaution during driving and in works which require psychomotor skills.