Simplified Interview for Negative and Positive Symptoms (SNAPSI) and the PANSS-6 scale – Polish language adaptation and application

Purpose
The treatment of schizophrenia requires regular assessment of the patient’s mental state. The quantitative assessment of the severity of schizophrenia symptoms is performed using clinical scales, most often the PANSS scale. However, the scale is rarely used in everyday clinical work as the assessment itself is very time-consuming. A Simplified Interview for Negative and Positive Symptoms (SNAPSI) and the PANSS-6 scale have been proposed as practical methods to facilitate the quantitative assessment of the patient’s mental state. The aim of the article is to present both of those tools and their adaptation to the Polish language.

Views
The PANSS-6 scale consists of six items taken from the PANSS scale, which assess delusions, hallucinatory behaviour, conceptual disorganization, passivity/apathy, social withdrawal, blunted affect, lack of spontaneity and a fluent conversation. Among the advantages of PANSS-6 are scalability, high correlation with full PANSS assessment results and sensitivity to changes in the patient’s mental state during antipsychotic treatment. SNAPSI is a semi-structured interview which enables the assessment of the PANSS-6 scale, the assessment of selected items of the Brief Psychiatric Assessment Scale (BPRS), and the Brief Negative Symptoms Scale (BNSS), as well as the assessment of the overall severity of symptoms with the General Clinical Impression (CGI) scale. It takes between 15 to 25 minutes.

Conclusions
Both tools have been adapted to Polish, in accordance with the recommendations regarding the adaptation of scales and clinical tests to other languages. They are being disseminated publicly through a website and can be used free of charge in medical and non-commercial scientific research.