Do Profoundly Prelingually Deaf Patients With Psychosis Really Hear Voices?

Abstract

The psychiatric literature has described profoundly prelingually deaf people with psychosis who report hearing voices. The present study proposes that such reports in fact reflect the beliefs of professionals in mental health and deafness and not the hallucinatory experience of psychotic deaf people. The study demonstrates that it is functionally meaningless to assert that a prelingually profoundly deaf psychotic patient "hears voices," and provides a theoretical structure from which to consider more appropriately the internal experiences of deaf people with psychosis, and to encourage the clinically relevant articulation of these experiences. The authors also suggest that the "true" phenomenological experience is of secondary clinical interest to the meaning imposed upon it by the client and the distress caused by it.

Auditory Hallucinations in a Deaf Patient – Case Report

“…In this context, it is important to understand that the modality of the hallucination is not essential to helping the deaf psychotic patient manage these hallucinatory experiences. Indeed it may be more clinically adaptive to actively acknowledge that the modality is not known (PAIJMANS, et al, 2006) In addition, it is essential to emphasize the lack of inclusion of the health system in relation to patients with hearing loss. Doctors in general do not have adequate training to deal with deaf people.…”

“…Indeed, in examining deaf psychotic patients' reports of auditory hallucinations, Critchley and colleagues (1981) found that "exact subjective experiences were difficult to determine. " Some deaf people with psychosis describe "voices" more as "ideas coming into one's head" or as "the feeling of air brushing past the ears, like when someone speaks" (PAIJMANS, et al, 2006) Even profoundly prelingually deaf people naturally have their own ideas and imaginings of what "hearing" is like, just as hearing people have their own imaginary (and simplistic) construct of what it is like to be deaf (PAIJMANS, et al, 2006) It seems then that, deaf or hearing, the human brain is predisposed to try to conceptualize "sound" in some way (PAIJMANS, et al, 2006) The key to successful communication with people with hearing loss is the ability to adapt to the needs of the situation. People with hearing loss often have good suggestions on how to best communicate with them, and it is important to enlist their help.…”

Assessment of psychotic disorders among prelingually deaf individuals

“…It is possible that some of the types of hallucination’s discussed here and experienced by deaf individuals should in fact be categorized as harmless. In line with conclusions from the research conducted by Pijmans et al ., what seems fundamental in the assessment process is the function of hallucinations – their meaning, the feelings evoked by them, and the consequences for individual’s functioning [ 33 ].…”

Choreography and Performance with Deaf Adults who have Mental Illness: Culturally Affirmative Participatory Research

“…Thus, language and communication barriers between the deaf client and the hearing therapist create a significant treatment barrier. This problem is only compounded by the scarcity of well-trained ASL interpreters and the fact that miscommunications can still occur even with an interpreter present (Paijmans, Cromwell, & Austen, 2006;Williams & Abeles, 2004). Mental health assessments such as mental status examinations, written questionnaires, and diagnostic inventories have been developed with and tested on hearing, English-fluent patients (Glickman, 2007;Paijmans, Cromwell, & Austen, 2006).…”