Background: Neuroleptic-induced movement disorders (NIMDs) have overlapping co-morbidity. Earlier studies have described typical clinical movement patterns for individual NIMDs. This study aimed to identify specific movement patterns for each individual NIMD using actometry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: As pyromania is a rare diagnosis with questionable validity, we aimed to describe a forensic psychiatric population of arson recidivists.
Methods: The medical records as well as the forensic psychiatric examination statements of 90 arson recidivists referred for pretrial psychiatric assessment in Helsinki University Hospital Department of Forensic Psychiatry between 1973 and 1993 were reviewed.
Results: The most important diagnostic categories of arson recidivists were personality disorders, psychosis and mental retardation, often with comorbid alcoholism.
Background: Simpson-Angus Scale (SAS) is an established instrument for neuroleptic-induced parkinsonism (NIP), but its statistical properties have been studied insufficiently. Some shortcomings concerning its content have been suggested as well. According to a recent report, the widely used SAS mean score cut-off value 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEur Neuropsychopharmacol
January 2005
We evaluated Barnes Akathisia Rating Scale (BARS) and standardized lower limb actometry in quantifying neuroleptic-induced akathisia (NIA) in 99 schizophrenia patients. Both instruments discriminated well between NIA and non-NIA patients and they correlated weakly but significantly. BARS was superior to actometry in screening DSM-IV diagnosed NIA patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe movement disturbances and brain imaging findings in Asperger's disorder (AD) suggest a dopaminergic deficit in movement regulation. Movement disorders of different etiologies have been quantified and specified with actometry. We compared 10 AD patients with 10 healthy controls, measuring their rest-activities by actometry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn a double-blind, controlled study, we examined the therapeutic effects of high-frequency left prefrontal repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on schizophrenia symptoms. A total of 22 chronic hospitalized schizophrenia patients were randomly assigned to 2 weeks (10 sessions) of real or sham rTMS. rTMS was given with the following parameters: 20 trains of 5-second 10-Hz stimulation at 100 percent motor threshold, 30 seconds apart.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe aim of the study was to compare the screening properties of two General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) versions and the Symptom Checklist (SCL-90), and to evaluate them as psychiatric screening instruments in Finland. We administered the GHQ-36 and the SCL-90 to psychiatric outpatients (n=207) and to a community sample (n=315). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to estimate the screening performance of the two instruments and of the GHQ-12 extracted from the GHQ-36.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn objective marker of restless legs syndrome (RLS) is needed for developing diagnostic tools and monitoring symptoms. Actometric ambulatory monitoring of 15 RLS patients and 15 healthy controls was undertaken in order to differentiate between RLS-related motor symptoms and normal motor activity. Nocturnal lower-limb activity per minute differentiated and discriminated between groups with no overlap, whereas the periodic limb movement index and the controlled rest activity during sitting showed less discriminative power.
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