Music psychopathology. I. Musical tempo and psychiatric disease.

In 53 psychiatric inpatients and 31 matched controls musical tempo was examined by means of instrumental playing of a well-known children's song. Despite an extreme interindividual tempo range the individual tempo remained surprisingly stable also over longer periods of time. The assumption that tempo would slow down in correlation with depressed mood could only be confirmed for endogenous-depressive patients, although neurotic and schizophrenic patients were often depressed to a comparable extent. Tapping at maximum speed refers to the supposed correlation with weakened motor performance in psychotic depression which is discussed.