Association Between Psychiatric Symptom Severity and Reaction Time: A Prospective Naturalistic Follow-up Study
Abstract
Reaction time is a simple measure of cognitive functioning which gets impacted in psychiatric disorders. While existing literature has explored the effects of psychiatric illness and psychotropic medications on cognition, the influence of illness severity on reaction time remains underexplored. This study aims to evaluate the impact of severity of psychiatric illness on reaction time. The current study was conducted in a tertiary care psychiatry outpatient setting. Convenient sampling was used to enrol 100 patients newly initiated on psychotropic medications along with their relatives as controls. Reaction time was assessed using the Human Benchmark Test at baseline, one week, and one month. The Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) was used to gauge the severity of the symptoms. Information was documented. SPSS was used for statistical analysis, and p ≤ 0.05 was deemed significant. Higher psychiatric symptom severity was modestly associated with slower reaction time at baseline. Reaction time decreased over follow-up alongside reductions in symptom severity; however, given the observational naturalistic design, these temporal changes cannot be attributed solely to treatment or symptom improvement. The findings support an association between clinical symptom burden and psychomotor performance and warrant confirmation in larger, adequately powered studies using standardized sampling and longitudinal modelling.
Keywords:
reaction time, psychiatric illness, severity, psychotropicsDOI
https://doi.org/10.25004/References
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Copyright (c) 2026 Deepa Sangolkar, Nandlal Prajapati, Aparna Sengupta, Sagar Karia, Nilesh Shah, Avinash Desousa
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