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Is handwriting analysis about to make a comeback? There was a time when handwriting experts were in every second Hollywood courtroom drama, making deep and meaningful judgments on everything from people's identities to the deepest psychological defects. But in reality, the research backing it up was either poor or non-existent, and the discipline got a bad reputation. Even so, some doctors use handwriting to evaluate how well medications are working - say in Parkinson's disease - and whether the dose should be changed. And with the advent of digital technology, where with a special writing tablet the actual process of handwriting can be analysed, there may be more uses in the offing. Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) has been thought in the past to produce writing abnormalities, possibly from subtle brain changes. OCD in its most extreme form is where someone's life is paralysed by obsessive behaviours, such as hand washing or repeated checking that doors are locked and electric utensils turned off. It seems that in people with OCD, digital handwriting measurement correlates with severity. They have a different speed of writing, the letters become smaller and the way they make each stroke of the pen changes. These findings may have two benefits: a more objective way for psychologists and psychiatrists to assess how badly someone is affected and whether treatment is working, and secondly (and perhaps more importantly), a window into the brain on what might be going wrong in this and other disorders.
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