TY  -  JOUR
AU  -  Meda, Nicola
AU  -  Recchia, Irene
AU  -  Guaglianone, Argentina
AU  -  Olivo, Daniele
AU  -  Northoff, Georg
AU  -  Solmi, Marco
AU  -  Pigato, Giorgio
AU  -  Sambataro, Fabio
T1  -  Validation of the Italian version of the Northoff Catatonia Rating Scale
PY  -  2022
Y1  -  2022-11-01
DO  -  10.1708/3922.39074
JO  -  Rivista di Psichiatria
JA  -  Riv Psichiatr
VL  -  57
IS  -  6
SP  -  282
EP  -  290
PB  -  Il Pensiero Scientifico Editore
SN  -  2038-2502
Y2  -  2026/05/09
UR  -  http://dx.doi.org/10.1708/3922.39074
N2  -  Summary. Purpose. Catatonia is a psychomotor syndrome characterized by heterogeneous motor, behavioral and affective alterations, and, in some cases, neurovegetative abnormalities that can be life-threatening. Although the prevalence estimates of catatonia are 10-20% of the hospitalized population, its clinical recognition remains a challenge for most clinicians. Differently from other catatonia rating scales, the Northoff Catatonia Rating Scale (NCRS) also evaluates the affective alterations that patients experience during catatonia and thus provides a more inclusive assessment of the alterations associated with this condition. To provide clinicians with a valuable tool for diagnosis, we translated the NCRS in Italian and validated it on a sample of 52 hospitalized patients with psychiatric disorders. Methods. An Italian version of the NCRS was prepared using the forward-backwards translation from English and administered to a sample of 52 in-patients (age 46.9±2.37 years). The inter-rater reliability, score correlations, internal coherence and decision statistics were computed. Results. The inter-rater agreement was higher for the motor subscale (100% agreement) than for the behavioral (94%) or affective subscales (92.3%). The inter-rater agreement was 100% for the diagnosis of catatonia. The NCRS correctly identified all patients with catatonia according to DSM-5 (sensitivity= 100%) and had a specificity of 88.9%, and its subscale scores were highly inter-correlated. Conclusions. This validation shows that the NCRS yields a good accuracy in diagnosing catatonia and high inter-rater reliability. Moreover, the high correlation between its subscales supports the view that catatonia is a multi-faceted truly psycho-motor syndrome. In conclusion, the validation and Italian translation of the NCRS provides the clinicians with a helpful tool for diagnosing catatonia which is easy to use and assesses the full psychomotor complexity of the syndrome.
ER  -