Motor impairment among different psychiatric disorders: Can patterns be identified?

•The clinical population demonstrated poor motor ability in comparison to controls.•Some diagnostic categories significantly predicted motor scores.•Constructed models indicate that diagnosis accounts for variance in motor ability. The aim of this study was to explore motor impairment in male adolescents suffering from psychiatric conditions. Taking into account the heterogeneity of a clinical population, motor profiles of distinctive diagnostic groups were evaluated. Whether or not motor ability discriminates between several diagnostic categories was investigated. The Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency, Second Edition (BOT-2) was administered to examine a detailed motor profile. The motor abilities of a clinical population (n=144) were compared to those of typically developing peers (n=87), using independent t-tests. To account for differences in intellectual functioning, a one-way ANCOVA was performed. To investigate the extent to which a specific diagnosis contributes to variation in motor scores a stepwise linear regression approach was applied. Results indicated that the clinical group performed significantly worse in comparison to the control group on all BOT-2 scales, even after controlling for IQ. The constructed models indicated that diagnostic categories accounted for a significant amount of the variance in motor ability scores. The results imply that motor ability of adolescents with a psychiatric disorder is in need of attention, regardless of the diagnosis and support the notion that objective motor assessment should be part of routine clinical practice.