Background: Several trials have suggested that negative symptoms are inversely correlated with suicidal risk in schizophrenic patients. This fourteen-year follow-up study compared the positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenic patients who died from suicide to those of subjects dying from other causes. Sampling and Methods: From 1991 to 1995, 150 patients meeting the research diagnostic criteria for chronic schizophrenia were assessed. On inclusion, they completed the Physical Anhedonia Scale as well as the Beck Depression Inventory, and the positive and negative symptoms were rated by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. Results: During the 14-year follow-up, 8 patients committed suicide, while 17 died from other causes. The suicide victims had a shorter duration of illness and a higher level of education compared to those who died from other causes. The proportion of ‘negative’ subjects, according to the composite index of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, was lower among the suicide victims than among the participants who died from other causes. All these differences were significant. The rate of deficit syndrome (0%) among the suicides was lower than that (23.5%) of the other subjects. The scores on the Physical Anhedonia Scale and of the social withdrawal item of the Beck Depression Inventory were higher in the suicides than in the subjects who died from other causes. Conclusions: These findings suggest that negative symptoms and notably deficit-negative symptoms could be associated with a low risk of suicide. In this study, the link between anhedonia and high risk of suicide in schizophrenic patients indicates that this symptom could be more closely related to depression than to negative symptoms.

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A total of 29 deficit schizophrenics were compared with 121 non-deficit schizophrenics using the Physical Anhedonia Scale (PAS) and the abridged form of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The results show that the deficit schizophrenics had a higher score on the PAS and lower score on the BDI than the non-deficit schizophrenics.

This article explores the relationships among anhedonia, depression, and schizophrenic symptomatology in chronic schizophrenia. To explore these relationships, factor analysis methods were used to analyze the latent organization of the variables. The Fawcett Clark Pleasure Capacity Scale-Physical Pleasure (FCPCS-PP) and the abridged version of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) were completed by 150 subjects who met research diagnostic criteria for definite chronic schizophrenia. The schizophrenic symptomatology was rated using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). Two separate exploratory principal components analyses were completed, followed by varimax rotation. The first was made on the correlation matrix comprising items from both the FCPCS-PP and PANSS and yielded a five-factor solution with virtually no overlap of the significant factor loadings for the items from each scale. The second was made on the correlation matrix comprising items from both the FCPCS-PP and BDI and yielded a two-factor solution with virtually no overlap of the significant factor loadings for the items from each scale. Confirmatory factor analyses corresponding to the two exploratory factor analyses were done to examine the goodness of fit of the five-factor solution versus a four-factor solution and the two-factor solution versus a one-factor solution. The five-factor and the two-factor solutions yielded the best fit to the data relative to the other models tested. The findings support the view that part of anhedonia is a construct that is distinct and separate from depression and schizophrenic symptomatology in chronic schizophrenia.