Video‐analytic study of manual kinesics and its lateralization in the course of treatment of depressive syndromes

Abstract

Video-taped interviews of 47, predominantly endogenous depressive in-patients, recorded on days 0 and 21 of pharmacotherapy were analysed with respect to frequency, duration and side-preference of defined hand movements. The data were related to clinical improvement or deterioration as assessed by judgement of the syndromal aspects: retardation and agitation. 1. Above all, improvement is marked by a decrease of Continuous body-focused movements (C) and an increase of Object-focused movements (O) of the speech primacy type (OS)-deterioration by an increase of C and decrease of OS. 2. The degree of retardation corresponds to O, the degree of agitation, above all to C. 3. O show no side-preference with a higher degree of retardation or agitation respectively, but a marked right perference with a lower degree of retardation or agitation, Discrete body touching (D) shows a left preference only, with a higher degree of retardation. A comparison of sidedness of O between interviews 1 and 2 shows no lateralization trend, either in the improvement or the deterioration group. In contrast, D changed from left weightiness to symmetry, coinciding with improvement but not with deterioration, With reference to the latter findings we discuss the possibility of a particular mode of cerebral lateralization predisposing to endogenous depression.

Psychiatric Clinic of the Free University of Berlin; Department of Clinical Psychiatry and Polyclinic (Psychiatrische Klinik der Freien Universität Berlin; Abteilung für Klinische Psychiatrie und Poliklinik)

“…As the frequency of the former decreases with the improvement of depression during its course and increases for the latter, the frequency of these hand movements is apparently state-dependent. By comparison, the lack of the physiological right-sided preponderance of object-focused hand movements in depressed patients during their illness and after remission indicates that this laterality behaviour is traitdependent (Harms & Ulrich, 1978;Ulrich & Harms, 1979;Ulrich, 1980Ulrich, , 1981. Another newly developed video-analytical technique is the time blind analysis, a procedure employed to expose in a random sequence short (e.g.…”

146. Body movements and mental illness: Alterations of movement behavior associated with eating disorders, schizophrenia, and depression

“…Likewise, Rogers (1985) and Bräunig (1995) have reported similar alterations of movement behavior in neuroleptic-free schizophrenic patients and medicated patients. In fact, more comprehensive analyses of movement behavior reveal further alterations of movement behavior in schizophrenic patients (Davis 1981(Davis , 1978Jones 1965;Wallbott 1989;Wolf-Schein, Fisch, and Cohen 1985). However, it is argued here that this problem is partly a methodological one, since in the studies on neuroleptic-naive schizophrenic patients the same movement diagnostic scales were used as in the studies on neuroleptic side effects.…”

“…Furthermore, depressive patients show a high amount of self-touch gestures (Freedman 1972;Freedman and Hoffman 1967;Lausberg 1995;Ulrich 1977;Ulrich and Harms 1979). Self-touch gestures are displayed when individuals experience stress or negative emotions (Barosso et al 1978;Freedman et al 1972;Freedman and Bucci 1981;Lausberg and Kryger 2011;Sainsbury 1955;Sousa-Poza and Rohrberg 1977;).…”

“…After a successful psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy, the improvement of the depressive disorder is accompanied by changes in movement behavior, such as an increase in object-focused gestures, an increase in the velocity of gestures, and a decrease of bodyfocused gestures (Ellgring 1986;Freedman 1972;Freedman and Hoffman 1967;Lausberg 1995;Ulrich 1977;Ulrich and Harms 1979;Wallbott 1989).…”