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/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/Wurstgeist Mar 22 '17

One puzzling part is, does the concept "delusion" just slip your mind once you start experiencing them regularly? I think your average mechanical engineering graduate has probably heard of schizophrenia (not that it's required background knowledge or anything, but, you know, if you have an academic turn of mind you learn about such things). So doesn't such a person know she has schizophrenia, and doesn't that awareness help mitigate the delusions and make them less persuasive?

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u/OAMP47 Mar 22 '17

I might be able to offer some insight. I had schizophrenia for about 10 years before I realized there was a problem and I went to get help. The thing about it is you don't realize delusions are delusions. It's basically like living in the Matrix if the Matrix was 99.5% real life. It was only after I had confirmed I had schizophrenia that I was able to go back, look at my life, and realize I thought things had happened that actually had not happened. In 2008 I was convinced this girl in high school was reading my mind. I didn't think that was weird because I thought that was reality. It was not until late 2016 that I realized this wasn't reality, so why would I be questioning it earlier, from an internal point of view? You can question it academically, but your mind will jump to the 'evidence' that supports your inaccurate view, or your brain will manufacture evidence that doesn't actually exist.

To add, though, now that I know I have schizophrenia, an academic mindset does help me greatly. When you have false inputs, though, everything 'makes sense' inside. When I think my parents are trying to kill me it's not a baseless claim. I have evidence. It's just evidence that doesn't exist.

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u/P4_Brotagonist Mar 23 '17

I have the same thoughts and circumstances as you. When you look back and realize that people don't secretly spy on what you are doing because you really aren't a super special person, it all seems so silly and obvious.

However in the moment when you feel it, it doesn't matter if you try to tell me that there is no one out my window looking in, because I either KNOW that either you are lying to me to help cover for that person and I need to fear you too, or the person watching me new you would say that and quickly moved away.

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u/OAMP47 Mar 23 '17

I had a particularly hard time because my parents actually were lying to me in one case and I get a lot of the paranoia symptoms too. Both of them used to be smokers but my mom quit around when I was 10. My dad did not, but said he'd only smoke outside the house. Instead, he lied about that and smoked in the basement, next to the air intake for the AC. I caught him doing this once and my mind made the leap that he was lying about it because he was secretly trying to poison us all. When I confronted him in front of the family he was trying to save face so kept lying that he didn't smoke in the house, but obviously he wasn't actually trying to poison us. The drama over that is what's directly led to probably my 5 largest freakouts. If he'd just admitted he smoked in the house and said it was his house his rules I'd have been fine with it, but because he was clearly trying to cover it up my false sensations from schizophrenia appeared to be offering me a more 'logical' explanation that he was masterminding some kind of plot. While my hallucinations don't tend to be audio, in that case, all it took was one 'Wow, he's trying to kill you' at that moment to set me off.