Washington: A new study has suggested that being left-handed can be linked to many mental disorders.
According to Yale researcher Jadon Webb and his colleagues, among those with mental illnesses, people with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are much more likely to be left-handed than those with mood disorders like depression or bipolar syndrome.
About 10 percent of the US population is left-handed. When comparing all patients with mental disorders, the research team found that 11 percent of those diagnosed with mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder are left-handed, which is similar to the rate in the general population.
But according to Webb, a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at the Yale Child Study Center with a particular interest in biomarkers of psychosis, "a striking of 40 percent of those with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder are left-handed."
"In general, people with psychosis are those who have lost touch with reality in some way, through hallucinations, delusions, or false beliefs, and it is notable that this symptom constellation seems to correlate with being left-handed," Webb said.
"Finding biomarkers such as this can hopefully enable us to identify and differentiate mental disorders earlier, and perhaps one day tailor treatment in more effective ways," he added.
The study showed that white patients with psychotic illness were more likely to be left-handed than black patients.
The study is published in the journal SAGE Open.
