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Assessing apathy: The use of the Apathy Evaluation Scale in first episode psychosis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2020

Ann Faerden ,
Ragnar Nesvåg ,
Elizabeth Ann Barrett ,
Ingrid Agartz ,
Arnstein Finset ,
Svein Friis ,
Jan Ivar Rossberg  and
Ingrid Melle
Ann Faerden*
Affiliation:
Section for Psychosis Research, Division of Psychiatry, Building 49, Ullevål University Hospital, Krikeveien 166, 0407Oslo, Norway
Ragnar Nesvåg
Affiliation:
Diakonhjemmet Hospital, 0319Oslo, Norway
Elizabeth Ann Barrett
Affiliation:
Aker University Hospital, 0514Oslo, Norway
Ingrid Agartz
Affiliation:
Diakonhjemmet Hospital, 0319Oslo, Norway Institute of Psychiatry, University of Oslo, 0318Oslo, Norway
Arnstein Finset
Affiliation:
Institute of Behavioural Sciences in Medicine, University of Oslo, 0317Oslo, Norway
Svein Friis
Affiliation:
Section for Psychosis Research, Division of Psychiatry, Building 49, Ullevål University Hospital, Krikeveien 166, 0407Oslo, Norway Institute of Psychiatry, University of Oslo, 0318Oslo, Norway
Jan Ivar Rossberg
Affiliation:
Section for Psychosis Research, Division of Psychiatry, Building 49, Ullevål University Hospital, Krikeveien 166, 0407Oslo, Norway Institute of Psychiatry, University of Oslo, 0318Oslo, Norway
Ingrid Melle
Affiliation:
Section for Psychosis Research, Division of Psychiatry, Building 49, Ullevål University Hospital, Krikeveien 166, 0407Oslo, Norway Institute of Psychiatry, University of Oslo, 0318Oslo, Norway
*
*Corresponding author. Tel.: +47 22118460; fax: +47 23027333. E-mail address: ann.farden@medisin.uio.no (A. Faerden).
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Abstract

Background

Recently there has been a renewed interest in defining the boundaries and subdomains of the negative syndrome in schizophrenia and new scales have been asked for. Apathy is one of the symptoms in focus. The Apathy Evaluation Scale (AES) with its clinical version (AES-C) is one of the most used scales in an interdisciplinary context, but it has never previously been used in a population with first episode psychosis. The main aims of this study were to examine the psychometric properties of the AES-C and its relationship to the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS).

Methods

A total of 104 patients with first episode psychosis from the ongoing Thematic Organized Psychosis Research (TOP) study were included.

Results

A factor analysis of the AES-C identified three subscales: Apathy, Insight and Social Contacts. Only the Apathy subscale showed satisfactory psychometric properties and showed acceptable convergent and discriminate properties by correlating strongly with the apathy-related items of the PANSS.

Conclusions

This study shows that the AES-C measures more than one dimension. The main factor, the Apathy subscale, can however be used to assess apathy in first episode psychosis patients in the ongoing work of refining the subdomains of the negative syndrome.

Keywords

First episode psychosisNegative syndromeNegative symptomsApathyPsychometric rating scaleAssessment
Type
Original articles
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 33 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Elsevier Masson SAS 2008

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