Movement difficulties — such as problems with walking, hand-eye coordination, or making sudden uncontrolled movements — are associated with a range of psychological disorders, including autism, ADHD, and schizophrenia. However, it’s not been clear whether specific motor difficulties can be mapped to any specific psychological symptoms. If they can, then analyses of how someone moves might, in theory, be useful for understanding a patient’s specific pattern of mental health problems, irrespective of their diagnosis.
In a recent study in Clinical Psychological Science, Jessica Fattal at Northwestern University and colleagues concluded that to some extent, this may be possible.
The team studied data on 3,460 participants without any diagnosed mental health disorder. These participants responded to questions about psychological symptoms known to relate to different disorders, including psychosis-like experiences, depression, anxiety, mania, dissociation, and substance abuse. The participants also reported whether they had (or had in the past) any movement-related symptoms, such as uncontrolled movements, issues with coordination or their levels of physical activity, or movement-related difficulties in childhood.
The researchers then looked for any links between psychological symptoms and any movement difficulties. They didn’t find any simple matches; it wasn’t the case that there was a clear movement profile that corresponded directly to symptoms of depression, but not symptoms of another disorder, for example.
However, the team did notice some broader relationships. For example, higher levels of three kinds of physical symptoms — overall movement difficulties; sudden, uncontrolled movements; and abnormalities with coordination — were linked to feelings of distress, dissociation, and fear.
Also, people who reported higher symptoms of mania and also reported substance abuse were more likely to report being more physically active, while those who’d scored higher for detachment, fear and distress reported being less active.
Overall, the results suggest that movement abnormalities are linked to both mental ill-health in general and also clusters of symptoms that are linked to some psychological disorders, the researchers think. In this way, the work highlights that there are some differences in how people with different clusters of psychological symptoms move.
The team would now like to see more research into these links, as well as studies on people diagnosed with a mental illness. That’s partly because knowing more about which patients are most likely to have which types of movement difficulties may be useful for understanding the mechanisms, the prognosis and the best treatments for patients with mental health disorders, the researchers write.
Read the paper in full:
Fattal, J., Ellman, L. M., Schiffman, J., Hirjak, D., Parmacek, S., Cowan, H. R., & Mittal, V. A. (2026). Motor Abnormalities and the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology: Incorporating a Psychomotor Perspective Into a Hierarchical Dimensional Symptom Framework. Clinical Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/21677026261450607
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