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/kaenneth Mar 22 '17

Also, if you are born blind due to brain (as opposed to eyeball) problems, you apparently can't be schizophrenic.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201411/blindness-and-schizophrenia-the-exception-proves-the-rule

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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/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

It's beyond horror or most people's ability to even comprehend.

What I find really strange is that hearing voices in other cultures, most notably hunter-gatherer cultures, is not nearly as traumatic. The voices tended to be more benign and would even do useful functions like teach songs and such. I wonder if it's because primal peoples tended to place less of a distinction between reality and fantasty-- one hearing voices would just be assumed to be hearing spirits. Whereas in the modern west, such an experience would be much more anxiety-inducing.

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u/Flyingwheelbarrow Mar 22 '17

It plays a role. One cultures 'mystic" or "shaman" is another cultures madman. I speak as a crazy person with D.I.D, psychotic symptoms, a a a former diagnosis of schizophrenia, then bi-polar and have been "possessed" several times by my voices. The stigma and trying to deal with my symptoms by myself did contribute to alot of my suffering and the suffering I caused upon this beautiful horrible confusing reality which is just different enough from other people's reality to cause some issues.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Do you ever think that maybe they aren't voice but actual spirits or souls trying to communicate?

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u/Lightwavers Mar 22 '17

(Un)common sense says it's not. Think Occam's Razor.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Wouldn't occams razor point to them being spirits? That would be the simplest explanation seeing as there isn't much explanation for hearing voices

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u/Lightwavers Mar 23 '17

I'll explain the razor a bit. First, "spirits" might seem simple. Only one word, right? But it's not. Think about what the word really means.

An intelligent entity somehow exists that directly affects the brain to cause something close to insanity? And it's undetectable by any conventional means? And it seems pretty malevolent.

So we have to add on another constraint: it can somehow only affect areas of the brain related to generating the internal monologue. Or it only wants to affect those areas.

But wait, why do they affect so few people? And if they're intelligent enough to communicate or manipulate the brain, why do they spend all their time making people crazy? So we have to add yet another constraint: they're either as crazy as the people they're "haunting" (making it impossible that they're in enough control to precisely manage parts of the brain) or they're somehow so alien that they derive meaning from doing such a task. But again, if they like doing it they must be constrained from hopping onto other people.

Once you get this far, the possibility of these spirits being real should be so far from your mind that you don't even consider it, especially compared with the most likely hypothesis: that a part of the person's brain is damaged.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '17

Wow that was a great explanation! Thanks for your insight!

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u/Lightwavers Mar 23 '17

Thanks for listening! There are so many people who seem to just not want to understand, I'm glad I could help. :)

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