The way you walk can betray depression. Depressed people progress a little more slowly, as a German-speaking research team has shown. This link between motor skills and depression could be used for therapeutic purposes.
The University of Applied Sciences of Eastern Switzerland (OST) in St. Gallen announced on Tuesday that it was able to detect depression in this way with a reliability of 90%. In concrete terms, the analysis showed that people with depression walked a little slower and with slightly shorter strides, says Josef Jenewein, who participated in the study.
In addition, their gait makes them more sensitive to disturbances. “They therefore lose their rhythm more quickly if they have to perform another task at the same time,” adds Professor Jenewein, medical director of the Hohenegg Private Clinic in Meilen (ZH).
Sixty patients from this clinic suffering from depressive symptoms participated in the study. Their data were compared to a control group composed of thirty OST collaborators, according to this work still in the pre-publication phase.
Useful results for therapy?
The scientists hope to be able to use these results for therapeutic purposes: according to their observations, the fact that people’s gait changes when they are depressed shows that there is a strong link between motor skills and depression. This potential could be further exploited in the future.
The next step will be to determine whether an improvement in depression after treatment in the clinic also translates into a change in motor parameters in patients. Scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) also contributed to this study.
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