Ganser syndrome

Ganser syndrome is a rare dissociative disorder marked by the giving of approximate or nonsensical answers to simple questions, a symptom historically termed Vorbeireden, meaning the person appears to understand what is asked yet answers just wide of the mark. It is often accompanied by other dissociative features such as fugue states, amnesia, conversion symptoms, visual pseudohallucinations and a clouded level of consciousness. The syndrome is named for the German psychiatrist Sigbert Ganser, who first described it in 1898 after observing prisoners awaiting trial in a penal institution in Halle, Germany, which is why the condition has also been called prison psychosis, alongside other names including nonsense syndrome, balderdash syndrome, the syndrome of approximate answers and hysterical pseudodementia. Its psychiatric classification has shifted over time: the DSM-III grouped it with the factitious disorders, the DSM-IV reclassified it as a dissociative disorder, and it does not appear as its own listed diagnosis in the DSM-5.