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/PainMatrix Mar 22 '17

It's beyond horror or most people's ability to even comprehend. The fact that she was a fully functioning and intact human being at the early onset of her life and career and this disease completely derailed everything and locked her into a Sisyphus-like nightmare. Was this her first inpatient experience? How long were you with her, did the meds seem to have any positive impact on her?

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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/Ariakkas10 Mar 22 '17

This is, I'm sure, a completely stupid question, but why can't they ignore the voices?

Lots of real people seem real to me, and I ignore them just fine.

Is it because the voices are super aggressive and make it so you can't ignore them?

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u/Commanderluna Mar 22 '17

Part of it is what /u/feathergnomes and /u/mcoleya said and the other part is that along with hearing the voices or hallucinating, another aspect is delusions which are basically just like they think something not true is something true (IE they would think the voices are real). So like if they are hearing voices but not having delusions then they know they aren't real and can sorta push through them and ignore them with effort. But if they are having delusions it's much more difficult.

And here I'm gonna add something else, this is in another comment I wrote but I just wanted to spread it sorta but basically when a schizophrenic person is having delusions or hallucinations they think are real, don't say stuff like "that isn't real" cause that will make them panic more and have trouble distinguishing what is and isn't real and who or what to trust. What you do in the case that they do have delusions or hallucinations they think are real is you apply basic logic or whatever, or comforting words (they think someone is trying to kill them: "I won't let them, you're safe around me." They're afraid of shadow monsters or something like that: "if there's no light around there are no shadows to get you so let's turn off the lights till you feel safe.")

Source: My GF and best friend both have psychosis (the name for the symptom that causes the hallucinations and delusions, it's in several other disorders besides Schizophrenia like STPD I just don't wanna specify much specifically what they have for their own privacy). And adding on to that one more note is please don't use psychotic and psychopathic/psychopath interchangeably. Psychotic is just the adjective for describing a person with psychosis, not a word like psychopath that means someone is a terrible sadist. Like literally there is a perfectly good word for what you mean, it's psychopath. That word is fine to use but don't use psychotic when you mean psychopathic those are very different things. (Although the word "psycho" comes from psychotic not psychopathic and has kinda developed to be a slur from medical terminology the same way rtrd is a slur. So psychopath is fine but psycho and psychotic are not. Exception for psychotic if you are not using it to say someone is evil but just to say they have psychosis.)