Post a brief explanation of three important components of the psychiatric interview and why you consider these elements important. Explain the psychometric properties of the rating scale you were assigned.

Psychiatric Evaluation and Evidence-Based Rating Scales

The Positive and Negative Symptom Scale (PANSS) is a psychiatric assessment tool used to diagnose schizophrenia and determine a schizophrenic patient’s response to treatment. PANSS is also used to determine the severity of schizophrenia in a patient (Demyttenaere et al., 2022). PANSS psychiatric interview requires 45 to 50 minutes for a practical session. The essential components of the PANSS psychiatric interview include a positive scale, general psychopathology scale, and negative scale. The positive and negative scales each have a maximum score of 49 and a minimum score of 7. In contrast, the general psychopathology scale has a maximum score of 112 and a minimum score of 16 (Demyttenaere et al., 2022). The general psychopathology scale includes tension, disorientation, active social avoidance, motor retardation, somatic concern, guilty feelings, lack of judgment and insight, preoccupation, disorientation, anxiety, uncooperativeness, posturing and mannerisms, unusual thought content, depression, poor impulse control, motor retardation, poor attention, and disturbance of volition.

Negative PANSS scale includes poor rapport, stereotyped thinking, social withdrawal, blunted affect, difficulty in abstract thinking, emotional withdrawal, and lack of flow of conversation (Czobor et al., 2022). A positive PANSS scale involves hostility, delusions, excitement, conceptual disorganization, persecution, hallucinations, and grandiosity (Demyttenaere et al., 2022). PANSS has a maximum total score of 210 and a minimum total score of 30; therefore, a patient cannot have a score of less than 30 (Nielsen et al., 2022). The negative, positive, and general psychopathology scales are assessed separately, and then their scores are combined. Psychiatric nurse practitioners use PANSS to assess the severity of symptoms in schizophrenic patients. Patients who have already been diagnosed with schizophrenia are scheduled for reviews to assess their response to medications. During the review, PANSS compares the patient’s current symptoms severity and initial assessment. The patient’s present scale shows whether they are positively responding to their treatment plan.

References

Czobor, P., Sebe, B., Acsai, K., Barabássy, Á., Laszlovszky, I., Németh, G., Furukawa, T. A., & Leucht, S. (2022). What Is the Minimum Clinically Important Change in Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia? PANSS Based Post-hoc Analyses of a Phase III Clinical Trial. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13, 816339. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.816339.