Negative symptoms represent a separate symptom domain, with respect to depression, neurocognition, and social cognition and
have a strong direct and indirect impact on real-life functioning. Furthermore, negative symptoms that do not improve following
antipsychotic treatment are an important diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. We conducted a 12-month-study open-observational
study to evaluate the efficacy of some atypical antipsychotics on negative symptoms, according to the following recommendations of
Consensus Development Conference Attendees. In our study, we evaluated in an open-label study the efficacy of some secondgeneration
antipsychotics (clozapine, quetiapine, olanzapine, aripiprazole, paliperidone) in 42 patients with schizophrenia or
schizoaffective disorder (DSM-5 criteria) with ‘persistent negative symptoms’. We used different rating scales (PANSS, CDSs, BNSS,
BPRS), but mainly we focused on the new Brief Negative Symptoms Scale (BNSS) for negative symptoms. Our total data indicate an
overall statistically significant reduction in all scales, although not clinically relevant
