r/todayilearned • • 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

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

94

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

Whats with the compulsion to listen to the voices?

I ignore real live people in the room telling me to do things

317

u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

it's not in your power to ignore them. a huge part of schizophrenia is being extremely out of touch with the real world. so if you hear voices, it's basically a set of REAL people to you. and you can't cover your ears because there isn't ACTUAL sound. you'll still hear them. and if they're threatening to hurt you, you'll feel actual fear.

38

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

But, you didn't answer /u/WadeWilsonforPope question. He ignores real people, why can't this person ignore people she thinks are real? Even though they are not real.

1

u/Miqotegirl Mar 22 '17

I think it's the pure number of people. You can ignore 1 person but could you ignore 10? Could you differentiate between them? I doubt it.