Citation

Dazzan P. Lancet Psychiatry 2023; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/S2215-0366(23)00001-9

PMID

36610441

Abstract

The Article by Birgitte Klee Burton and colleagues in The Lancet Psychiatry investigated the development of motor skills in a large sample of children with a familial risk of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder at age 8 years and again at age 12 years, and compared their performance with that of a group of children with no familial risk of either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. The authors showed that children of parents with one of these diagnoses had more than two times higher odds of having definite motor problems, and that for children of parents with a diagnosis of schizophrenia these problems remained stable across time. This is an important study and a valuable addition to this field of research. Previous literature on the role of motor skills and psychopathology has mostly focused on individuals at risk of schizophrenia, with substantially less work done in those at risk of bipolar disorder. Furthermore, the study is unique in evaluating the relationship between motor function over time in these groups of at-risk individuals and the concomitant presence of psychotic experiences. Problems in motor coordination have been consistently identified as indicating alterations in neurodevelopment in individuals with psychosis. This study brings an important contribution to the debate on whether motor problems represent trait or state markers, suggesting that they are in fact stable, which is of potential utility in the identification of susceptible individuals.

Language: en