Deaf Schizophrenics

[tongodeon]

Last night I posted a question to deaf:

When a prelingually deaf person - someone who is born deaf and has never known sound as language - becomes schizophrenic... they don't hear voices, do they? If not, what tells them to kill people or run away from the CIA mind control rays? SOMETHING tells them this. Do they hallucinate people signing at them

Comments

[usernameguy]

(I'd put this on the other thread but it's kinda tangental)

I've read two interesting theories as to causes of mental disease lately:
- Someone said that one of the root causes of schizophrenia is the lack the ability to filter incoming stimuli. That is, schizophrenics can't zone out. They process all incoming sensory inputs, all the time. Eventually their brains can't disseminate all of it anymore. They get overloaded.
- Similiarly, someone (may have been the same article) was arguing that depressives simply look at everything exactly as it is. They can't fool themselves that things turned out well, when they didn't. For example, depressives correctly figure out that a machine giving them candy doesn't actual respond in any way to their button pushes. It's just random. Normal people fool themselves into thinking they catch on to "the pattern" of button presses.

[tongodeon]

The "depressives" article reminds me of something I said when I was younger. My mom thought I was depressed and wanted to put me on antidepressants. I said "I'm depressed I've realized that a large part of the world is crap. If I take antidepressants the world will still be crap, and I'll be on drugs. That's not solving the problem."

[omarius]

Thunk! Goes a quote in the quotes file.

[mmcirvin]

I know the studies you're talking about, which seem to have objectively proved that everything is shit, but I have seen and talked to people having major depressive episodes and I don't buy this at all. They believe that every action is worthless, they are personally worthless, nothing they do will ever succeed, they are stupid and ugly and boring, everyone hates them and no pleasure or contentment is possible under any circumstances. This isn't the world as it is, it's a vision of the world run by a sadist demiurge.

I've been fortunate enough not to experience anything that intense, but I've written before about how, when I'm feeling down, I easily fall into a kind of negative faith: to use the example of the random candy machine, I'd encounter a run of four or five no-candy button presses in a row and too easily conclude that the machine has stopped giving candy forever, when in fact it's still random. This kind of reasoning is as tainted as trying to find the system.

[usernameguy]

Yeah, I'm not sure I buy it too, and for roughly the same reasons.

Still, it's interesting to think about mental diseases as having a single cause that changed the person's perception of reality, and that then led them down a path towards the pathology. Like, we're so close to being there ourselves and we don't know it.

[gaping_asshole]

Certainly lying to yourself about the world around you is a coping mechanism that most un-depressed people use. Hence George Bush getting re-elected. But I don't think it's at all accurate to equate simple realism with true clinical depression. Given my own experiences with the condition, and the experiences of certain people tongodeon and I know well, I'll have to maintain that serious depression involves negative emotions that go far far far beyond anything that can be rationally supported. mmcirvin's candy machine counter example is a good one.

[spiritualmonkey]

- Similiarly, someone (may have been the same article) was arguing that depressives simply look at everything exactly as it is. They can't fool themselves that things turned out well, when they didn't.

(Previously posted here)

I would highly recommend the book Against Depression by Peter Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac. The book is a long, well-documented polemic written by a psychiatrist who has been treating depressed patients for decades

[usernameguy]

Sigh. [Take a deep breath]

To reiterate: I don't believe the theory myself. I just thought it was an interesting study. I am not casting aspersions on anyone who has dealt with depression, nor am I glorifying it. I'm not even analyzing it. Just thought it was interesting.

I don't care what you think about depression, really.

Please, everyone, it was an innocent little comment. Do not continue to hammer me on something I already believe in.

[spiritualmonkey]

I apologize if you feel I jumped on you improperly.

To you it's an innocent little comment, an academic question.

To some of us, it is literally an issue of life and death.