Psychotic disorders: 6 questionnaires and rating scales

The ClaCoS is a clinical battery for assessing social cognition in adults, designed to objectively assess the social difficulties reported in psychiatry and to guide treatment. It combines a subjective measure and objective tasks exploring the main domains of social cognition: emotion recognition, social perception and knowledge, theory of mind and attributional style. It is particularly useful in adults with psychiatric disorders, especially schizophrenia spectrum disorders and autism spectrum disorder, but can also be used in other clinical or research contexts. Its main value lies in identifying a detailed functional profile that can be used directly for neuropsychological assessment, cognitive remediation, psychoeducation and therapeutic follow-up.

The SANS is a clinician-rated scale used to measure the severity of negative symptoms in schizophrenia and, more broadly, in patients with a psychotic disorder. The tool explores five clinical domains: affective flattening, alogia, avolition or apathy, anhedonia or asociality, and attention. It is mainly useful for the initial assessment, clinical follow-up and research.

The PAM is a self-report questionnaire designed to assess attachment styles in relation to psychosis. It focuses specifically on the dimensions of anxious attachment and avoidant attachment in people with psychotic symptoms or a diagnosed psychotic disorder. It is useful for clarifying the relational dynamics that may influence psychopathology, and for guiding psychotherapeutic intervention.

The RPAS is a trait-based self-report questionnaire designed to measure a lasting decrease in the ability to experience pleasure from physical and sensory experiences, such as eating, touch, sex, movement, smells, sounds, or aesthetic appreciation. It is widely used in clinical psychology and in research on schizotypy, schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and negative symptoms. Its true/false format allows quick, independent administration, but it mainly assesses a relatively stable tendency rather than a momentary emotional state. It can be useful for identifying marked physical anhedonia, which should be interpreted with caution within a broader assessment.

The RSAS is a trait-based self-report questionnaire designed to measure social anhedonia, that is, reduced pleasure, interest, and engagement in interpersonal relationships. Part of the Chapman Psychosis-Proneness Scales, it is mainly used with adults to explore negative schizotypy, social withdrawal, and certain profiles of vulnerability to the schizophrenia spectrum. In clinical practice, it helps the psychologist objectify a lasting lack of interest in social contact and distinguish it from mere social inhibition, social anxiety, or a depressive state, without replacing the clinical interview or the diagnosis.

The BNSS is a brief clinician-rated scale, administered as a semi-structured interview, designed to assess the negative symptoms of schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders. It explores the five domains now considered central to this symptomatology, namely anhedonia, asociality, avolition, blunted affect, and alogia, with an additional item on the lack of normal distress. The tool was designed to be more attuned to contemporary conceptions of negative symptoms than older scales, while remaining short enough for clinical practice and research. It is particularly useful for objectively measuring overall severity, distinguishing the motivation-pleasure and emotional expression dimensions, monitoring changes during treatment, and documenting a patient's symptom profile in detail.