Role of psychomotricity in the management of body image disorders in schizophrenia: case report

Abstract

Schizophrenia is one of the most debilitating psychiatric disorders affecting around 1% of people worldwide. Its causes and management are quite poorly controlled. Patients with schizophrenia often experience an alteration in their body image. Its corollaries such as depersonalization are felt like real torture. In the biopsychosocial model of the management of mental health disorders, very few tools are effective in the management of depersonalization syndrome which is often overlooked by psychiatrists who mainly focus on erasing hallucinations and other positive symptoms. Psychomotricity, a poorly known branch of the biopsychosocial model, is still trying to find a place between psychological and body therapies. For a period of 6 months, we conducted a prospective case-study on two patients living with schizophrenia and treated in the Psychiatry Department of Laquintinie Hospital in Douala in Cameroon. In those patients, the association of psychomotor therapies provided a satisfactory response to a problem of depersonalization, also known as fragmentation anxiety.