OBJECTIVE: Recent neuroscientific models suggest that functional bodily symptoms can be attributed to perceptual dysregulation in the central nervous system. Evidence for this hypothesis comes from patients with functional dizziness, who exhibit marked sensorimotor processing deficits during eye-head movement planning and execution. Similar findings in eye-head movement planning in patients with irritable bowel syndrome confirmed that these sensorimotor processing deficits represent a shared, transdiagnostic mechanism. We now examine whether erroneous sensorimotor processing is also at play in functional movement disorder. METHODS: We measured head movements of 10 patients with functional movement disorder (F44.4, ICD-10), 10 patients with functional dizziness (F45.8, ICD-10), and (respectively) 10 healthy controls during an eye-head experiment, where participants performed large gaze shifts under normal, increased, and again normal head moment of inertia. Head oscillations at the end of the gaze shift served as a well-established marker for sensorimotor processing problems. We calculated Bayesian statistics for comparison. RESULTS: Patients with functional movement disorder (Bayes Factor (BF)10 = 5.36, BFincl = 11.16; substantial to strong evidence) as well as patients with functional dizziness (BF10 = 2.27, BFincl = 3.56; anecdotal to substantial evidence) showed increased head oscillations compared to healthy controls, indicating marked deficits in planning and executing movement. CONCLUSION: We replicate earlier experimental findings on erroneous sensorimotor processing in patients with functional dizziness, and show that patients with functional movement disorder show a similar impairment of sensorimotor processing during large gaze shifts. This provides an objectively measurable, transdiagnostic marker for functional disorders, highlighting important implications for diagnosis, treatment, and de-stigmatization.
Background: Community indicators may predict and influence individuals` mental health, and support or impede mental health management. However, there is no consensus on which indicators should be included in predictions, prognostic algorithms, or management strategies for community-based mental health promotion and prevention approaches. Therefore, this scoping review provides an overview of relevant community-level indicators for mental health in the general as well as risk populations in a European context. Methods: We conducted a scoping review in the following electronic databases: PubMed, Embase, and PsycInfo. Eligible studies focused on context factors such as either the physical or social environment, reporting at least one mental health outcome and referring to a European population. Publications between 2012 and March 8, 2022 are considered. Results: In total, the search yielded 12,200 identified records. After the removal of duplicates, 10,059 records were screened against the eligibility criteria. In total, 169 studies were included in the final analysis. Out of these included studies, 6% focused on pan-European datasets and 94% on a specific European country. Populations were either general or high-risk populations (56 vs. 44%, respectively) with depressive disorder as the main reported outcome (49%), followed by general mental health (33%) and anxiety (23%). Study designs were cross-sectional studies (59%), longitudinal (27%), and others (14%). The final set of indicators consisted of 53 indicators, which were grouped conceptually into 13 superordinate categories of community indicators. These were divided into the domains of the physical and social environment. The most commonly measured and reported categories of community indicators associated with mental health outcomes were social networks (n = 87), attitudinal factors toward vulnerable groups (n = 76), and the characteristics of the built environment (n = 56). Conclusion: This review provides an evidence base of existing and novel community-level indicators that are associated with mental health. Community factors related to the physical and social environment should be routinely recorded and considered as influencing factors or potentially underestimated confounders. The relevance should be analyzed and included in clinical outcomes, data, monitoring and surveillance as they may reveal new trends and targets for public mental health interventions.
Health Promotion , Mental Health , Humans , Europe/epidemiology , Anxiety
Introduction: Functional disorders are prevalent in all medical fields and pose a tremendous public health problem, with pain being one of the most common functional symptoms. Understanding the underlying, potentially unifying mechanism in functional (pain) disorders is instrumental in facilitating timely diagnosis, stigma reduction, and adequate treatment options. Neuroscientific models of perception suggest that functional symptoms arise due to dysregulated sensorimotor processing in the central nervous system, with brain-based predictions dominating the eventual percept. Experimental evidence for this transdiagnostic mechanism has been established in various functional symptoms. The goal of the current study was to investigate whether erroneous sensorimotor processing is an underlying transdiagnostic mechanism in chronic (functional) pain. Method: A total of 13 patients with chronic (functional) pain [three patients with chronic (functional) pain disorder, F45.40, ICD-10; 10 patients with chronic pain disorder with somatic and psychological factors, F45.41, ICD-10]; and 15 healthy controls performed large combined eye-head gaze shifts toward visual targets, naturally and with increased head moment of inertia. We simultaneously measured participants' eye and head movements to assess head oscillations at the end of the gaze shift, which are an established indicator of (transdiagnostic) sensorimotor processing deficits of head control. Results: Using a Bayesian analysis protocol, we found that patients with chronic (functional) pain and control participants stabilized their heads equally well (Bayes Factor 01 = 3.7, Bayes Factor exclusion = 5.23; corresponding to substantial evidence) during all sessions of the experiment. Conclusion: Our results suggest that patients with chronic (functional) pain do not show measurable symptom-unspecific sensorimotor processing deficits. We discuss outcome parameter choice, organ system specificity, and selection of patient diagnoses as possible reasons for this result and recommend future avenues for research.
