Abstract
(1) Background: Emerging evidence indicates that non-motor symptoms significantly influence the quality of life in dystonic patients. Therefore, it is essential to evaluate their psychological characteristics and personality traits. (2) Methods: Subjects with idiopathic dystonia and a matched control group were enrolled in this prospective observational cohort study. Inclusion criteria for patient group included idiopathic dystonia diagnosis, evolution exceeding 1 year, and signed informed consent. Inclusion criteria for the control group included lack of neurological comorbidities and signed informed consent. All subjects completed the DECAS Personality Inventory along with an additional form of demographic factors. Data (including descriptive statistics and univariate and multivariate analysis) were analyzed with SPSS. (3) Results: In total, 95 participants were included, of which 57 were in the patient group. Females prevailed (80%), and the mean age was 54.64 ± 12.8 years. The most frequent clinical features of dystonia were focal distribution (71.9%) and progressive disease course (94.73%). The patients underwent regular treatment with botulinum toxin (85.95%). In addition, patients with dystonia obtained significantly higher openness scores than controls, even after adjusting for possible confounders (p = 0.006). Personality traits were also different between the two groups, with patients more often being fantasists (p = 0.007), experimenters (p = 0.022), sophists (p = 0.040), seldom acceptors (p = 0.022), and pragmatics (p = 0.022) than control subjects. (4) Conclusion: Dystonic patients tend to have different personality profiles compared to control subjects, which should be taken into consideration by the treating neurologist.
Highlights
Dystonia is a movement disorder presenting with sustained/intermittent muscle contractions that determine abnormal, repetitive postures and/or movements
This study aimed to identify whether patients with idiopathic dystonia exhibit peculiar, different personality profiles compared to a matched control group
Inclusion criteria for the patient group included an established diagnosis of idiopathic dystonia (according to the Guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of primary dystonia reported by an EFNS MDS-ES Task Force), an evolution exceeding 1 year, and signed consent to participate in the study
Summary
Dystonia is a movement disorder presenting with sustained/intermittent muscle contractions that determine abnormal, repetitive postures and/or movements. It is often induced or worsened by voluntary action coupled with excessive muscle activation [1]. The prevalence of depression and anxiety in patients with dystonia ranges between 12% and 71% throughout life [4,5,6]. Since these disturbances can manifest before the onset of dystonia, they could be part of the disease [7] and not just reactive to the motor symptoms. There are still conflicting data on whether mood alterations are secondary to motor manifestations and consecutive psychosocial impairment or primary manifestations of dystonia
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