Anhedonia in Schizophrenia: a Review of Assessment Strategies

Overview

Journal Schizophr Bull

Publisher Oxford University Press

Specialty Psychiatry

Date 2005 Oct 14

PMID 16221997

Citations 134

Authors

William P Horan

Ann M Kring

Jack J Blanchard

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Anhedonia, the diminished capacity to experience pleasant emotions, is a common, treatment-resistant feature of schizophrenia that is often included among the negative symptoms of this disorder. This selective review describes the 3 most commonly used approaches to assess anhedonia in schizophrenia: interview-based measures, self-report trait questionnaires, and laboratory-based assessments of emotional experience. For each assessment approach, psychometric properties, relationships to other symptoms and features of schizophrenia, and relationships with the other assessment approaches are evaluated. It is concluded that anhedonia can be reliably assessed and constitutes a distinctive, clinically important aspect of schizophrenia that should be included in a comprehensive evaluation of negative symptoms. Current efforts to define more precisely the nature of the hedonic deficit in schizophrenia are discussed, and recommendations for optimal assessment of anhedonia in clinical trials of novel treatments for negative symptoms are provided.

Citing Articles

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