Childhood Motor Coordination and Adult Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2009-09-01

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Schiffman, Jason; Sorensen, Holger J.; Maeda, Justin; Mortensen, Erik L.; Victoroff, Jeff; Hayashi, Kentaro; Michelsen, Niels M.; Ekstrom, Morten; Mednick, Sarnoff; Childhood Motor Coordination and Adult Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders; The American Journal of Psychiatry 166,9 (2009); https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2009.08091400?

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©American Psychological Association, 2009. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal. Please do not copy or cite without author's permission. The final article is available, upon publication, at: https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2009.08091400.

Subjects

Abstract

Objective: The authors examined whether motor coordination difficulties assessed in childhood predict later adult schizophrenia spectrum outcomes. Method: A standardized childhood neurological examination was administered to a sample of 265 Danish children in 1972, when participants were 10–13 years old. Adult diagnostic information was available for 244 members of the sample. Participants fell into three groups: children whose mothers or fathers had a psychiatric hospital diagnosis of schizophrenia (N=94); children who had at least one parent with a psychiatric record of hospitalization for a nonpsychotic disorder (N=84); and children with no parental records of psychiatric hospitalization (N=66). Psychiatric outcomes of the offspring were assessed through psychiatric interviews in 1992 when participants were 31–33 years of age, as well as through a scan of national psychiatric registers completed in May 2007. Results: Children who later developed a schizophrenia spectrum disorder (N=32) displayed significantly higher scores on a scale of coordination deficits compared with those who did not develop a mental illness in this category (N=133). Conclusions: Results from this study provide further support for the neurodevelopmental hypothesis of schizophrenia and underscore the potential role of cerebellar and/or basal ganglia abnormalities in the etiology and pathophysiology of schizophrenia.