From a physiotherapist’s chair, many mental-disorder categories share motor and cognitive dysfunctions that land people in the same high fall-risk bin, even when psychiatry slices the labels differently. Antipsychotic treatment adds extrapyramidal side effects that further degrade motor control.
Numbers from the synthesis
Older adults with mental disorders may fall more than once a year. Hospitalisation after a fall can reach up to 60% in populations with intellectual disability. People with mental disorders under drug treatment can be up to 70% more likely to fall. Fear of falling and depressive symptoms compound the injury cascade.
Prevention that does not expire
Fall-prevention programmes can cut risk and rates — but effects are not everlasting. The review argues for lifelong strategies so that falls stop being recurring extreme traumas. Safe-fall and balance work from martial-arts pedagogy belongs in that toolbox when delivered by qualified teams.
Tone
This is advocacy for measurement and training access, not a claim that judo alone fixes serious mental illness.
The review deliberately buckets diverse mental-disorder labels together for fall-risk analysis from a motor-cognitive physiotherapy view. That is methodological clarity, not diagnostic erasure: different illnesses, overlapping fall mechanics.
Extrapyramidal drug effects, fear of falling and depression form a triangle that pure strength training will not cut alone. Safe-fall skill, environment design and medication review belong in the same care plan.
Cite 2016;12:87–94 when you argue for permanent — not episodic — fall programmes in mental-health services.
The review deliberately buckets diverse mental-disorder labels together for fall-risk analysis from a motor-cognitive physiotherapy view. That is methodological clarity, not diagnostic erasure: different illnesses, overlapping fall mechanics.
Extrapyramidal drug effects, fear of falling and depression form a triangle that pure strength training will not cut alone. Safe-fall skill, environment design and medication review belong in the same care plan.
Cite 2016;12:87–94 when you argue for permanent — not episodic — fall programmes in mental-health services.
Where this sits in the lab
Biokineticum’s public notes exist so practitioners can reach the DOI without drowning in jargon — and so athletes, teachers and clinicians see that combat-sport science also publishes on prisons, faith, fair play, sauna physiology and disability policy. Soft topics still deserve hard methods: sample sizes, instruments, effect directions and explicit limits.
If you teach, treat or coach from these findings, copy the reference list into your syllabus, open the full text, and write down what you will measure next week. That is the only CTA that always fits.
Reading notes
Psychosocial and public-health papers describe associations in defined samples — not moral verdicts about individuals. We keep the language descriptive, avoid stigma, and point you to the DOI for methods and limits.
If the topic touches your clinic, classroom or programme design, treat this post as a map to the paper, not a substitute for it.
References
- Mosler D. Fall as an extreme situation for people with mental disorders: a review. Archives of Budo Science of Martial Arts and Extreme Sports. 2016. 12:87-94. Full text / abstract
Measurement-led biomechanics, health psychology and clinical tools at Biokineticum.
