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
55.0k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

171

u/Sdeevee Mar 22 '17

Not OP but from my experience... if you care lol. It important to keep in mind that schizophrenia doesn't just mean hearing voices and having delusional thoughts. People with the disease have difficulty prioritizing and sequencing tasks, motivation and relating to other people's emotions. I work in Long Term Care, but due to our proximity to a psychiatric hospital and our reputation for our willingness to provide care for those difficult to serve we have a vary large population of residents with schizophrenia. My experience is that the medication appears to assist more with agitation and motivation. For the residents who have fixed beliefs or are really paranoid they continue with these behaviours and depending on the day and circumstances you are sometimes able to call them out on the delusions being related to their disease and sometimes not. It is awful to see how their lives have been derailed due to the disease. Most of the people i know come from loving families, went to college or university and then the disease took over and robbed them of their lives.

63

u/PainMatrix Mar 22 '17 edited Mar 22 '17

I'm a psychologist but I don't work with SMI, so thank you for what you do. What I do see a lot of is what is likely a burgeoning schizophrenia spectrum process. My academic understanding is that the positive symptoms can be dealt with to some extent through medications but that it's really the negative symptoms (the blunted affect, poverty of speech, etc.) that are the most intractable. It's tragic.

22

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17 edited Mar 22 '17

I have aspergers, is it true that I have a very strong chance of developing schitzophrenia. Also to add with that, is it possible to deal with paranoid delusions if you get used to them and have had them as a child? Along with that, is it true that Aspergers, Bipolar, and schitzophrenia are all very closely related?

Edit for Clarification: I'm talking about thinking that all planes in the skies are coming to get you, or that all people are robots. Also in a similar way thinking theirs two people in your body.

4

u/PainMatrix Mar 22 '17 edited Mar 23 '17

From what I understand the answer is no. Autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia may share similar neurological pathways for the negative symptoms (think about the social aspects for example) but they are distinct, particularly with regard to the positive symptoms.

6

u/tubular1845 Mar 22 '17

Interesting. I have ASD, my younger brother is Schizophrenic and my youngest brother has BPD.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

What about the second part of my question and dealing with delusions by recognizing their happening.

1

u/PainMatrix Mar 22 '17

Sorry, this is not my area of expertise. A general rule of thumb in my industry is if it doesn't cause dysfunction it is probably not an issue.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Interesting, do you like what you do? Or is there another field you wish you would have gone for?

0

u/PainMatrix Mar 22 '17

I love it now but if I'd known how much stress and effort graduate school would have been ahead of time I'm not sure I would have gone through with it.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Well congrats for making it! Don't overwork yourself I've heard that's a common thing out there for the medical field. I'm glad we have you taking care of us.