ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the impact of mental disorders on interpersonal coordination. It explains the two mental disorders namely schizophrenia and social anxiety disorder (SAD) characterized by social functional deficits, and discusses their consequences for nonverbal social behaviours in general and social motor coordination in particular. Classical psychiatry has long believed that mental disorders were mainly characterized by cognitive and psychological impairments. The chapter describes the importance of considering social motor behaviours as a potential target of psychosocial treatment in psychiatric disorders. It explains that social motor coordination was impaired in schizophrenia. This chapter provides evidence to support the claim that social motor coordination could be considered as a trait-marker that might be associated with the risk for schizophrenia. It provides the presence and the central role of reductions of social motor behaviour in social functioning in schizophrenia and SAD. SAD also called social phobia is a chronic and disabling condition.
