Study of comparison of Neurological soft signs between psychotic and Nonpsychotic patients.

BACKGROUND: –Neurological soft signs (NSS) are neurological abnormalities that encompass motor, sensory and inhibitory dysfunction manifested in some mentally ill patients. These are described as “soft” to indicate a lack of precise cerebral localization. AIMS-: (i) To assess the NSS and compare their percentage in psychotic and non psychotic patients, (ii)To determine the associations between NSS and various sociodemographic variables. METHODS-: In this Comparative study of 100 patients having psychotic (schizophrenia, schizophrenia spectrum disorders and Bipolar affective disorder) and nonpsychotic(Anxiety, Depressive, Dissociative, somatoform disorder) disorders, who were first examined by a psychiatrist and were diagnosed according to ICD 10 and then were divided into two groups of psychotic and non-psychotic and examined using a 28-item Neurological evaluation scale (NES) and their NSS scores were calculated and the mean scores were compared among the two groups. RESULTS-: In our study females were maximum(57) and most of the patients (42) belonged to the age group of 18-30years and the mean age found is 35.38years. Mean NES score among psychotic and non psychotic patients is found to be 20.62 and 9.12 respectively and that the study found significant difference in mean NES score between psychotic and non psychotic groups with p<0.05. CONCLUSION – : Calculation of NSS score in psychotic patients help in predicting the response to pharmaceutical treatment, risk of drug reactions/side effects and can also be used to identify subjects at risk to develop schizophrenia and to monitor disease progression.