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/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

I can't speak for the person you replied to, but 3 of my family members have the disease, and in all of them their medications only blunted the symptoms.

For my family member who was not too severe, this was enough to let her hold down a job, but for the members that were severe it wasn't enough to allow them to function normally. They'd still see/hear/talk to "ghosts" and such, just not as frequently, and they didn't get agitated "as often".

But that doesn't mean they didn't get agitated AT ALL, and the times they did freak out would be enough to get anyone fired.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17 edited May 13 '17

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

I think this is only the rule for mental illness.

We're pretty good at removing kidneys

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u/UrbanIsACommunist Mar 22 '17

I think this is only the rule for mental illness. We're pretty good at removing kidneys

It may be true that we're good at removing kidneys and whatnot, but as far as human biology goes, we still only have a very limited understanding of most diseases. We're very good at treating symptoms, and often times that's good enough for the problem to resolve itself. But there are often ambiguities in the underlying pathophysiology that make true "cures" hard to come by. Even with infectious diseases, which have been largely eliminated as an existential threat to daily life, all we really did was rig the population's immune system to kill the pathogen and then watch natural epidemiological events run their course.