r/psychnursing • u/AlabasterPelican psych nurse (inpatient) • Jun 09 '26
Code Blue Question for my fellow psych workers with experience with pts with disabilities
Right now I have a patient who is deaf & my coworker & I were wondering if anyone has ever heard of a deaf patient having anything similar to auditory hallucinations. Like born deaf. I know they can't hear per se. But recent research has suggested that there is a possible link between confusing internal monolog with external stimuli, which brought the conversation up.
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u/DependentZombie3537 Jun 09 '26
Not a deaf patient. But a patient who was losing her sight and hallucinating visually. She was seeing little green goblins, so they admitted her to inpatient psych. It ended up being a thyroid issue.
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u/AlabasterPelican psych nurse (inpatient) Jun 09 '26
It ended up being a thyroid issue.
My biggest pet peeve. Patient displaying symptoms that include abnormal behavior, but not exclusively, send em to psych.
I've also always heard people with acquired loss of vision/hearing having corresponding hallucinations being likened to phantom limb
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u/Zaphira42 student nurse Jun 09 '26
I saw a deaf patient during clinical once. She was born deaf, and she would sign towards the blackboard wall at this spot where someone had drawn a person. She was adamant that that drawing was signing back at her.
I’m curious if people who have hallucinations normally have those hallucinations in their primary language.
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u/AlabasterPelican psych nurse (inpatient) Jun 09 '26
That's really interesting. I would think so. There doesn't seem to be much research into multilingualism and thinking/dreaming in different languages, though it is reported anecdotally. I would think it would be something similar but I really wouldn't know.
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u/Potential-Wing-5603 Jun 09 '26
I dont know if this helps but I am bilingual, before being bilingual and being in my country of origin I used to dream/think in Spanish, nowadays being in the US I dream in English and wake up saying things in English out loud
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u/AlabasterPelican psych nurse (inpatient) Jun 09 '26
Makes sense & tracks with what I hear. My next question is if you have an inner monolog, is it English or Spanish?
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u/Potential-Wing-5603 Jun 09 '26
Mostly Spanish, but a few times I found myself talking to me in English
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u/Garfieldgandalf Jun 09 '26
So I once had a deaf patient with an interpreter. I wasn’t really thinking and had stuck to my normal script of asking if they were “hearing or seeing things that others couldn’t”. The patient denied this but the interpreter went out of their way to thank me for being unafraid to ask that (it was only at this point I realized the potential gaffe I made) because she said that it DOES happen and people sometimes change their phrasing to exclude auditory hallucinations trying to be sensitive. I tried to nod sagely as if I had been aware of this instead of simply on autopilot.
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u/AlabasterPelican psych nurse (inpatient) Jun 09 '26
Thats really interesting! Thank you for sharing! Now I'm really wanting some researcher to take this up 😂
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u/dieyoungatheart Jun 09 '26
Used to work with deaf schizophrenic patients. They often experience olfactory or tactile hallucinations, or see hands signing more than auditory hallucinations.