29th January 2024

First Rank Symptoms

These are a group of symptoms identified by German psychiatrist Kurt Schneider as being characteristic of schizophrenia, henceforth known as ‘Schneider’s first rank symptoms’. In practice, first-rank symptoms can often overlap with other disorders and, therefore, are not strictly pathognomonic of schizophrenia. Nonetheless, they are useful as a screening tool to prompt further evaluation of each symptom domain in schizophrenia. These are:

1. Auditory hallucinations: third person running commentary or thought echo (hearing thoughts spoken aloud)
2. Somatic hallucinations: bodily sensations experiences such as crawling insects
3. Delusion of thought interference: Thought insertion, withdrawal, and broadcast
4. Delusions of control or passivity phenomenon: the belief that an external source is controlling the individual