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Psychosomatic Medicine 11:354-360 (1949)
© 1949 American Psychosomatic Society

Handwriting in Rheumatoid Arthritics

LOUIS A. GOTTSCHALK M.D.1, HERMAN M. SEROTA Ph.D., M.D.1, and KLARA GOLDZIEHER ROMAN 1

1 Institute for Psychosomatic and Psychiatric Research and Training of the Michael Reese Hospital and the Institute for Psychoanalysis, Chicago. This investigation was supported in part by a research grant from the Division of Mental Hygiene, Public Health Service, Federal Security Agency

Measurements were made of the point pressure and speed of handwriting of 15 rheumatoid arthritics, 15 control patients with other diseases, and 15 control subjects with no disease.

Variations in the frequency, amplitude, and wave-form of the point pressure tracings were markedly more prominent in the records of the two groups of subjects with disease than of the "normal" control subjects.

No significant differences were found in the average of the highest writing pressure or the average amplitude of pressure changes. No significant differences were found in the frequency of oscillations, except that the patients with diseases other than rheumatoid arthritis wrote significantly slower with forced pressure than the "normal" control subjects.

No quantitative differences could be established at this time between the tracings of patients with rheumatoid arthritis and other patients with symptomatic disease used as controls. The majority of these controls were patients suffering from hypertension (9 out of 15). Further control studies are required to distinguish which disease conditions are reflected in disturbances of neuromuscular performance similar to those noted in the rheumatoid arthritics tested.

Further studies are desirable to establish the relative importance of such variables as age, sex, educational level, and occupation on speed and point pressure and the variations in regularity of point pressure of handwriting.

The specific value of this technique would appear to lie in its simple application of a mechanical means to measure the impairment of expressive muscular performance.




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