Unmasking motor dysfunctions in psychiatry: Insights from a tertiary center in West Bengal

Background: It is known for a long that there is a strong relationship between movement disorder and different psychotropic medications and psychiatric illness. Most psychiatric patients receive multiple medications from different groups, and many having multiple diagnoses (psychiatric and medical), causing various movement disorders in a complex fashion. Aims and Objective: The aim of the study was to assess the prevalence of different movement disorders in indoor psychiatric patients. Materials and Methods: We examined indoor psychiatric patients (n=268) and assessed their movement disorders clinically. Severely ill patients (Clinical global impression-severity (CGI-S) >4) were excluded applying CGI-S. Prevalence of different psychiatric and movement disorders measured cross-sectionally with relevant socio-demographic data. Results: Among the total of 268 indoor patients, 138 (51.5%) male and 130 (49.5%) female. Most of them (221) were Hindu by religion (82.5%). The rest was Muslims. Mean age (standard deviation) was 40.22 (12.41). Most of the patients were schizophrenic (n=148, 55.2%), followed by intellectual and developmental disabilities (n=43, 16%) and bipolar affective disorder (n=36, 13.4%). Only 100 (37.7%) patients among 268 admitted patients had some kind of movement disorder. Among patients with movement disorder, the maximum was drug-induced Parkinsonism category (n=47, 17.5%), followed by Tardive Dyskinesia (n=29, 10.8%). As per the Chi-square test, distribution of Psychiatric diagnoses (with and without movement disorders) in different age groups and sex found to be significantly different. Two-way between group analysis of variance showed different psychiatric diagnoses and sex had an impact on the duration of hospital stay. Conclusion: Different movement disorders being so prevalent in long-term psychiatric indoor facilities. It may be concluded that such indoor facilities should have regular medical and neurological check-up for proper patient care, and psychiatric students need reasonable training in neurology, especially movement disorder.