Motor impairment among different psychiatric disorders: Can patterns be identified?

The aim of this study was to explore motor impairment in male adolescents suffering from psychiatric conditions. Taking into account the heterogeneity of a clinical population, motor profiles of distinctive diagnostic groups were evaluated. Whether or not motor ability discriminates between several diagnostic categories was investigated. The Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency, Second Edition (BOT-2) was administered to examine a detailed motor profile. The motor abilities of a clinical population (n=144) were compared to those of typically developing peers (n=87), using independent t-tests. To account for differences in intellectual functioning, a one-way ANCOVA was performed. To investigate the extent to which a specific diagnosis contributes to variation in motor scores a stepwise linear regression approach was applied. Results indicated that the clinical group performed significantly worse in comparison to the control group on all BOT-2 scales, even after controlling for IQ. The constructed models indicated that diagnostic categories accounted for a significant amount of the variance in motor ability scores. The results imply that motor ability of adolescents with a psychiatric disorder is in need of attention, regardless of the diagnosis and support the notion that objective motor assessment should be part of routine clinical practice.