Abstract
Raballo [1] argues that Huber's basic symptom approach is gaining international recognition in psychiatry. However, I think it is important to highlight that this is not a novel approach to examining phenomenology in psychosis, or for detecting those with a vulnerability to schizophrenia. The definition of schizotypy by Meehl in the American Psychologist in 1962 [2] refers to a high risk approach that has been well researched for over fifty years. Over time this research has suggested that psychosis proneness can be identified via cognitive/perceptual symptoms and negative symptoms centred on anhedonia. Indeed, if one enters ‘schizotypy’ into PubMed searches one will find an extensive literature in comparison to ‘Huber's basic symptoms’.
A recent empirical study by Yon et al. [3] experimentally examined the relationship between Huber's basic symptoms and schizotypy in a sample of 399 university students. The subjective experiences that underlie basic symptoms were found to be significantly associated with the positive symptoms of schizotypy, that is the perceptual and cognitive aberrations, but not the negative symptoms such as anhedonia. This suggests that the measures used to examine basic symptoms and positive schizotypy can be used interchangeably, and that more cross-talk between the two research fields should occur.
From a theoretical point of view, Mass et al. [4] suggested that basic symptoms and schizotypy represent two distinct dimensions. That is, proneness to schizophrenia is a relatively enduring trait, while basic symptoms are defined by reversible experiences. However, to date there have not been such longitudinal studies to investigate the accuracy of these speculations.