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Mixed-handedness in patients with functional psychosis
R R Malesu1, M Cannon, P B Jones
1Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, London.
Background:
An excess of non-right-handedness has been shown among patients with schizophrenia. However it is not clear whether this finding can be accounted for by an increase in left-handedness, mixed-handedness or both. It is not known whether atypical patterns of hand preferences occur in other functional psychotic illnesses.
Method:
The Annett hand preference questionnaire was administered to patients with schizophrenia (n = 120); affective psychosis (n = 55); schizoaffective psychosis (n = 41), and control subjects (n = 86). Handedness was classified into three categories: right, mixed and left-handedness.
Results:
The hand preference patterns of patients with functional psychotic illnesses were not significantly different from controls. Patients with schizophrenia showed a non-significant excess of mixed-handedness compared with controls. Patients with schizophrenia and affective psychosis showed a non-significant decrease in left-handedness compared with controls.
Conclusions:
Although our results showed a trend in the hypothesised direction, we failed to demonstrate that patients with psychotic illness differed from controls on self-reported hand preference patterns.