Short palm
Page most recently updated 7 September 2026
This page focuses on short palm as a morphologic feature of conditions that may also be associated with psychiatric manifestations, such as psychosis, mania, autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, OCD, and self-injurious behaviours. The page begins with a clinical definition of short palm based on the standardized Elements of Morphology terminology, together with visual examples from the same source. This is followed by a list of conditions in which short palm has been described in association with psychiatric manifestations.
Of note, to optimize clinical utility, the list does not include conditions associated with intellectual disability in the absence of other psychiatric features.
Each condition listed below is linked to a dedicated page within this resource. These pages describe the psychiatric manifestations associated with each condition, as well as other morphologic and broader clinical features, allowing the differential diagnosis to be considered from multiple perspectives.
Short palms
This patient has short palms, in addition to short fingers.
Image credit: National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), Elements of Morphology.
Definition
Subjective: The length of the palm appears relatively small compared to the finger length or the limb length.
Objective: For children from birth to 16 years of age the length of the palm is less than the 3rd centile.
Note: Palm length is measured as described in (refs). This term is reserved for individuals with shortening of all four metacarpals 2–5. Individuals with fewer than four shortened metacarpals (in a eudactylous hand, the metacarpals of F2–5) should be described as Short metacarpal. See the entry for Small hand for a discussion of this finding. Short hand should not be used as it is a bundle of two readily separable terms, Short fingers (which, as noted above, can itself be a bundled term) and Short palm.
Replaces: Short hand.
Conditions with potential psychiatric associations
Selected references and further reading — Morphologic lens
Allanson JE, Biesecker LG, Carey JC, Hennekam RCM. Elements of morphology: introduction. Am J Med Genet A. 2009;149A(1):2-5.
Hennekam RCM, Biesecker LG, Allanson JE, Hall JG, Opitz JM, Temple IK, Carey JC; Elements of Morphology Consortium. Elements of morphology: general terms for congenital anomalies. Am J Med Genet A. 2013;161A(11):2726-2733.
Jones KL, Jones MC, del Campo M. Smith's recognizable patterns of human malformation. 8th ed. Philadelphia: Elsevier; 2021.
Reardon W. The bedside dysmorphologist: a guide to identifying and assessing congenital malformations. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2016.