Psychomotor disturbances in psychiatric patients as a possible basis for new attempts at differential diagnosis and therapy. Part VI. Evaluation of psychomotor training programs in schizophrenic patients.

Parts I-III of this series established signs of disturbed motor performance--the "psychotic motor syndrome" (PMS)--in schizophrenic and endogenous depressed patients, which was not found in neurotic/reactive depressed nor healthy persons. Part IV yielded EEG signs of concomitant brain dysfunction in these patients, which were demonstrated by other (SPECT/PET) neuroimaging methods also. In part V we engaged in the development of motor-training programs applied both actively and mentally, using the PMS as target syndrome in depressed patients. We hypothesized that motor training would not only improve disturbed motor behaviour, but ameliorate other symptoms of psychopathology additionally, which was supported for these patients. Part VI is the final paper of this series demonstrating favourable results of our motor-training programs in 96 schizophrenic inpatients in two separate investigations. A general discussion to the whole series attempts to link motor symptoms to neuroimaging findings of brain dysfunction during motor challenge and to modern three- and four-factor models of schizophrenic symptomatology. A final version of our complete training programs will be published as an appendix to this paper along with information regarding the abbreviated test battery.