BNSS
Brief Negative Symptom Scale (BNSS)
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.
- Number of questions
- 13 questions
- Estimated duration
- 12 minutes
- Language
- English
- Original name
- Brief Negative Symptom Scale
- Target audience
- Adults
- Authors
- Brian Kirkpatrick, Gregory P. Strauss, Linh Nguyen, Bernard A. Fischer, David G. Daniel, Angel Cienfuegos, Stephen R. Marder (2010)
- Category
- Psychotic disorders
Scoring & interpretation
Each item is rated from 0 to 6 based on the interview, observed behavior, and information mainly covering the past 7 days. The total score is the sum of the 13 items, ranging from 0 to 78. Subscores can be calculated for anhedonia, asociality, avolition, blunted affect, alogia, and lack of distress. A higher score indicates more severe negative symptomatology. The distress item is interpreted in terms of a reduction in normal distress. There is no universally accepted diagnostic cutoff, so interpretation relies on overall severity, the profile across subdimensions, and the clinical context.
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