[Peculiarities of schizophrenic diseases in prelingually deaf persons]

Abstract

Diagnostic criteria of schizophrenia, according to Kurt Schneider's first and second range symptoms appear in spoken language. This raises the question of how symptoms of schizophrenia are manifested in prelingually deaf people who mainly communicate with sign language. The article shows that acoustic hallucinations of normal hearing schizophrenic people correspond to visual and tactile hallucinations of the prelingually deaf. An additional similarity is found in a disorder of the structure of the language. These similarities show that schizophrenia does not depend on the acoustic part of language or the acquisition of spoken language.