Ziyu Ye, Jinyu Li, Yun-Ai Su

Peking University Sixth Hospital, Peking University Institute of Mental Health, NHC Key Laboratory of Mental Health (Peking University), National Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders (Peking University Sixth Hospital), Beijing, 100191, People’s Republic of China

Correspondence: Yun-Ai Su, Peking University Sixth Hospital, Institute of Mental Health, Beijing, 100191, People’s Republic of China, Tel +86-10-62723767, Fax +86-10-62027314, Email [email protected]

View the original paper by Miss Ye and colleagues

This is in response to the Letter to the Editor

We thank Diane C. Gooding and Madeline J. Pflum for their valuable correspondence. In the paper, we stated, “The researchers modified the wording of the questions without conducting actual interviews with adolescent subjects, ignoring the adolescents’ direct experience of social pleasure”. The original intention was to emphasize the methodological differences between the ASA and other existing scales in their development. The development of ASA was grounded in extensive qualitative interviews with adolescents suffering from depression, which served as the basis for item generation. We acknowledge that our wording could have more precisely conveyed this distinction and regret any implication that the ACIPS-A is not a rigorously developed instrument.

We agree that social anhedonia is a key transdiagnostic dimension, particularly during the unique period of adolescence. The ASA, which primarily captures general anhedonia, and the ACIPS-A, which focuses specifically on social anhedonia, are not mutually exclusive but should be regarded as complementary tools. Your suggestion to combine the use of ASA and ACIPS-A is an excellent proposal, as it would facilitate a more comprehensive assessment of the multidimensional nature of anhedonia in adolescents.

All the authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest in this communication.

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