Ninth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

The study was aimed to examine whether the 6-minute walk test and the dual task balance tests can distinguish falls in people with schizophrenia. This study employed the case-control research design. The case group was the individuals who had falls history during 2017/01/01-2018/12/12 before assessment according to the medical records. The control group was recruited from our non-acute ward residents and had no falls history during the same period. The control group was matched based on age(±5 years old ), gender, and the ward of the case group. In the end, we recruited 40 participants for the case group and 88 for the control group. People with schizophrenia in case group (fallers) had a poor performance in single leg stance test with a manual dual task (SLSman). It was found that SLSman was the only significant discriminant with the stepwise Logistic regression analysis, OR (odds ratio) was 0.937 (95% CI, 0.898-0.978). In other words, for every 1 second reduction in SLSman performance, the odds of falling will increase by 6.3% (95% CI, 2.2% - 10.2%). The overall model explained 14.4% (Nagelkerke R2=.144). For the case group, Pearson Correlation’s results showed that the number of falls was significantly negatively correlated with lower limb muscle strength (30-second sit-stand test) and cognitive function (MOCA) score. The SLSman is a valid assessment to distinguish falls in people with schizophrenia.