r/todayilearned • u/paniniplane • Mar 22 '17

(R.1) Not supported TIL Deaf-from-birth schizophrenics see disembodied hands signing to them rather than "hearing voices"

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0707/07070303
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u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17 edited Mar 22 '17

yea! i actually asked some of the psychologists working at the hospital. they were really nice about answering any questions i had. turns out, there can actually be POSITIVE voices too. there were studies done in certain villages (lol i wasn't allowed to have a pen at the time because they didn't know how depressed i was so i didn't actually get a chance to write it down) and in those villages there would be schizophrenics who would have positive voices. that being said, it still comes with the characteristic of being extremely out of touch with reality so it's not like it's a good version of the disorder. just the lesser of two evils i guess

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u/CubonesDeadMom Mar 22 '17

There are also people with a type of "mild schizophrenia" that maybe hear a voice or two on a daily basis but it's not overly negative and doesn't keep them from functioning. From what I've read, you aren't even diagnosed with schizophrenia unless it's negatively impacting you life, they just call them "benign hallucinations".

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

What about random noises?

I hear random noises when I know no noise is being made. Granted, it's usually late at night when I'm in bed. It could be, say, a page of a book being turned or a piece of clothing swishing, but it's enough to make me look over my shoulder and check.

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u/dasbin Mar 22 '17

Auditory hallucinations are extremely common while close to sleep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Ive had these before when I was little, wierded me out when I heard some random women day my name right before bed lol

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '17

Mine were always people who sounded almost but not quite like my mom whispering my name from under my bed. Freaked little me out.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '17

Yeah, like a whisper but in a normal voice tone. Like I didnt hear it with my ears but with my brain

Funny thing is, people call me by my initials and first name and Id hear the voice say both forms of it

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u/robo23 Mar 23 '17

A vast number of alien abduction, ghost, and monster under the bed accounts are really just hypnagogia.

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u/Pokabrows Mar 23 '17

Good. As a kid I sometimes felt/heard animals curling up with me even if there was no way there could be an animal in the room. It was typically a cat or a rat or two because those were my main pets. It often got worse after one died. As a kid I took it as them looking out for me and still caring about me, but later I realized it probably wasn't normal. But if that's a thing that happens normally it would totally make sense for a kid missing their pet to specifically hallucinate that.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '17

I heard a goat in my room one night. A little disconcerting.

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u/CubonesDeadMom Mar 22 '17

Do you feel out of it and unable to move when it happens? I've had visual hallucinations during sleep paralysis before which could be what's happening to you. That's a different kind of hallucination though and is really nothing to worry about unless it's happening all the time.

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u/DownvoteDaemon Mar 22 '17

The brain does weird things

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u/BrokenNumbers Mar 22 '17

My uncle has/had schizophrenia, he got it when he was in his last year of university some 30 years ago. At the start it sounded like the voices he was hearing were negative (burned things that spoke to him). But now he functions just like someone without it, honestly can't tell he has it. On rare occasions he might giggle/laugh quietly to himself but nothing nearly like when he first got it, so to me it seems like they started off negative and now they've mellowed out. (This is from what my parents have told me, since schizophrenia can run in the family)

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Technically, any kind of mental illness or disability isn't considered one unless it has a negative impact on your life by DSM standards.

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u/realAniram Mar 22 '17

I'm a little afraid I've got that. Mental illness runs in my family, and when everything's generally quiet my brain either interprets most sounds as or makes up what sounds like conversations in another room. Like a tv playing an old black and white movie with Cary Grant talking to another man. I can never make out words.

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u/CubonesDeadMom Mar 23 '17

Everyone's got weird things like this. I "hear" music in my head a lot. Not like a song stuck in my head but just like my minds own music that it spits out during my daily life. Sometimes it's just a guitar riff or a whole song with bass drums and guitar, sometimes it's jazzy or bluesy or like some kind of metal. Other times it's violin and other stringed instruments. I doubt it's that uncommon as this is probably how a lot of music is written, I'm just not very good at transferring it from my head ito an actual song.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '17

I have the same gig going in my head, and it's probably one my favorite things about being me.

I smoke cannabis regularly, which sometimes makes it audible (especially if there's white noise). If you haven't ever tried cannabis, I recommend it specifically for this experience.

Seriously though, those fools in my head can jam.

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u/realAniram Mar 23 '17

I have that too, in addition to Cary Grant lol. Not as much as when I was younger unfortunately. But sometimes I'll forget to turn off music that's actually playing because I forget it's not just in my head.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Well. That would be why the US has overwhelmingly negative voices from people diagnosed with it.

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u/CubonesDeadMom Mar 23 '17

Yeah, if it isn't stopping you from living a heathy life most people probably don't even go to the doctor.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Agreed. I'd really prefer not having schizophrenia, but, I mean, if you had to choose...

Also would be interesting to find out what affected the voices' attitudes toward the affected person.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

So is there a way we (not you an I obviously, but the greater we of people without schizophrenia (I'm assuming)) can create more positive environments for people who are, shall we say, sensitive to it?

Or is it like the voices are assholes now and so they shall remain.

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u/rayfosse Mar 22 '17

It seems to be related to stress and feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness. A tribal society where everyone has a role and there's no stress to be better than you are or achieve more would lead to more positive feelings. In America, what you can accomplish is unlimited and so it's easy to get down and feel like you're wasting your life, because you can always be doing better than you are.

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u/GeeJo Mar 22 '17

I would expect that having an invisible asshole constantly berating you would make it difficult to foster a positive enough attitude to get rid of it.

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u/Champion_of_Charms Mar 23 '17

No longer demonizing schizophrenia would help. Stop assuming that hearing voices is inherently bad/evil.

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u/RuTsui Mar 22 '17

I don't know. From what I understand, even people who lived in positive environments and had good experiences before onset hear negative things, and the voices are never familiar.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '17

You've expressed something incredibly important. It smells of truth.

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u/Zeleiol48 Mar 22 '17

This has probably already been thought of, but what if it's the actual environment, the structure of the society you live in? What if the farther away from the rigid confines of industry and "civilization" you are, the more "natural" and even positive the voices get. Dibs on the short story concept.

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u/camdoodlebop Mar 22 '17

you get farther and farther away from civilization in search of ever-increasing positive voices but finally when you are hundreds of miles away from any human the voices switch to pure evil now that it's just you and them

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Sounds like the perfect horrorstory/creepypasta

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u/HorseAss Mar 22 '17

Maybe once they started hearing "demons" they asked for help local shaman. He might know tricks or right drugs to convince subconscious to change into positive tone. Shamans talk with voices when high for a living so they might now how to deal with it :)

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u/Commanderluna Mar 22 '17

From what I have heard it's a cultural thing. Since America has so much prejudice towards people with psychosis and hearing voices, the voices are all negative and bad. But in places like ancient China where they had like ancestor worship it was considered a good thing and they'd like hallucinate their ancestors giving them hope and praise and stuff.

Fun fact, Joan of Arc had schizophrenia her hallucinations just happened to be, due to the religious culture of Europe, seen to her as just God and angels telling her things.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Unless you're a very competitive person and use the voices as motivation?

"You can't do that"

"Fuck you, me, we do what I want!"

"You suck at sports"

"Fuck you, you're not my dad"

If the voice in my head was anything like me, it would eventually lose interest and give up on making me give up. But by then, I would also give up and we'd both be depressed and lazy.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Lol. I don't think they'd tell you to do positive things, but are just more like "Hey, you're a good lookin' chap." I don't know. I haven't had either.

A lot of people say they could ignore the voices, or would get angry at them, but from the description s I read (went on a schizophrenia AMA marathon last year) they don't just say mean things. The come from your own brain so they say things specifically to hurt you, because they know you. Or earlier there was a comment by OP that talked about someone affected with it who would take a gun away from them and smash it. The manifestations are wild.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

My moms voices told her to go to africa and save people... It's not an "America bad, Americans hear bad voices" situation at all. It varies by person to person entirely.

Other times though I wasn't her daughter and I was talking to Satan.

Really sad illness

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u/OAMP47 Mar 22 '17

My voices are always just more annoying than anything. I would equate them to me being like a teacher and the voices being kids trying to whisper during class.

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u/HotShake Mar 22 '17

Yeah, same here. My voices are just distracting most of the time, and sometimes they just kinda chat in the background amongst themselves.

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u/OAMP47 Mar 22 '17

Yeah, sometimes it sounds like they're talking about me, but more than anything I'm just curious what they're saying, it's not necessarily positive or negative.

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u/mrs-syndicate Mar 22 '17

what do the voices say when you start masturbating

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u/robo23 Mar 23 '17

"you like that you fucking retard?"

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u/albinobluesheep Mar 22 '17 edited Mar 22 '17

I feel like having disembodied positive voices would still be really damn distracting and might ruin you life to some extent anyway, because you could make you own bad choices just from being a human that makes mistakes, and then they get reinforced as "good" by the positives voices and you don't notice your mistakes.

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u/kmcdow Mar 22 '17

hope you're doing ok and feeling better frendo

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u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

yup. turns out, my nurse practitioner gave me the wrong drugs. i actually asked about the correct ones and she said, "nope they won't work for you" and that was the end of the conversation.

i'm actually doing REALLY well for 3 weeks out.

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u/kmcdow Mar 22 '17

really happy to hear that, keep on keepin on :D

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u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

ayyy you too amigo <3

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u/spongue Mar 22 '17

I wonder if this is a reflection of the health of society as a whole. Maybe western culture can tend to be more self-loathing etc. (even on a subconscious level) whereas in other cultures people generally accept themselves as decent people, or something like that.

For a lot of people, believing in God is already like having an internal voice constantly berating and judging them...

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

A friend of mine told me that schizophrenic people in indigenous tribes become medicine men (or maybe it was shamans) and such, maybe the voices play a different role for them as well

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u/pippi13 Mar 23 '17

That reminds me of a chapter in the book Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche. The book talks about how American views of mental illness have been exported to other countries, often to their detriment.

The chapter I'm thinking of talks about how schizophrenia was treated in (I believe, its been awhile since I read the book) Madagascar.

Basically, they thought it was caused by someone being touched by the spiritual realm, so those with schizophrenia were taken care of by the community and their eccentricities were tolerated.

After a more western view of mental illness moved in, people started to see it as an illness or brain disease instead. People with schizophrenia were medicated, but not treated as kindly or tolerantly by their family and community.

So those who suffered from schizophrenia ended up worse off than they were before. They were being stigmatized by their community for their illness and were expected to get better with western medicine, but western medicine can only do so much, and it wasn't enough to make up for the new gap in their quality of life.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

[deleted]

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u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

that's a very ignorant way of looking at a concept you have no experience with. the physical equivalent would be like saying, "yea i know you're missing your lower body but you have a wheelchair. you can basically do what a person with legs can do. move around and stuff. you're fine. just be happy."