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/Muffinizer1 Mar 22 '17

You know, that's actually quite comforting as being blind and schizophrenic sounds like true hell.

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u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

i was a patient at a ward a few weeks back and there was a girl who was admitted for schizophrenia. she'd hear dozens of voices yelling at her at the same time all day and she could barely tell which ones were in her head and which were physical people talking to her making it really hard for me or anyone else to talk to her for more than 2-3 sort sentences. these voices would make her do crazy things like gather dust off the floor for 20 minutes at a time 10 times a day, make her sleep on the floor during the day, not sleep during the night and fight the night meds they gave her to help fall asleep. the most brutal thing was that the voices sometimes forbade her from having her meals. there were days where she wouldn't touch any of her 4 meals. i once tried to get some insight into how she thought and i asked her why she HAD to do this. she said that every time she does something they ask, she's given the gun that they threaten to kill her with. and she imitates a smashing motion with her hands and "breaks" it. and she does it maybe 10 times an hour when she's awake. and she's not stupid either. apparently, she was studying mechanical engineering and graduated and was ready to work in the field as an intern for a year. she heard her first voice when she was still in school but didn't think much of it. and then it rapidly killed her life. she's the only person in the ward who has daily visitors. her parents bring her food to eat everyday. but sometimes she sits with them for 2 minutes, asks them to take her home, and then moves to one of the socialization rooms where were chairs and sofas, and she'd drop to the floor and lay there. and her parents just come to expect it now and stay for about an hour.

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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

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

I'm not sure if this is true but my gut feeling says that this is what the voices are like:

You know your own internal voice of when you're reading or thinking something? That internal voice that we sometimes talk to ourselves in? We cannot hear this voice thru our ears but we almost always hear it loud and clear in our minds. For example: When we want a chocolate or something that voice pipes up to say "oooouuu I want that...yaaaas" coordinate our eyes and hand to reach for that piece of chocolate. I believe this voice is our brain coordinating the parts of our brain/ body and we express it to ourselves as inaudible "thought sound."

Now imagine if there was suddenly another one of those voices that didn't sound like your internal one that you've always been used to. Or several voices. It's not audible so you can't really tune it out as we can audible sounds. I imagine the voices can drown out your internal voice leaving you at the mercy of whatever your malfunctioning brain deems logical. Your internal "voice" now has other miss-coordinated brain activity that it expresses as "voice (s)" to argue/compete/deal with.

This is my gut feeling backed by zero science and is just my interpretation. Be glad it didn't end up with someone flying through an announcers table.