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Negative symptoms in psychotic disorders cover a broad array of discrete deficits and often denote poorer antipsychotic treatment response and prognosis. To better describe exactly what constitutes these phenomena, a multisite collaborative research group was formed, spurred by a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Consensus Development Conference. The group developed the Clinical Assessment Interview for Negative Symptoms (CAINS) and has now reported on its final study, which validated the measure in 162 patients.
The CAINS, a 13-item interview that takes about 20 minutes to administer (personal communication with first author), delineates two major areas for inquiry — “expression of emotion” (i.e., vocal prosody, gestures, facial ex…