Comorbidity of schizophrenia and prelingual deafness: its impact on socialnetwork structures

Background: Prelingually deaf persons usually gain only a rudimentary comma nd of speech and prefer sign language to communicate within the deaf commun ity without the handicap they experience in the hearing world. Maintaining social contact within this rather scattered community, however, requires hi gher degrees of social initiative and mobility. The aim of the present pape r was to study the quantity and quality of social integration among a group of prelingually deaf schizophrenic patients (n = 49) and two control group s comprising prelingually deaf psychiatric but non-psychotic patients (n = 38) and hearing schizophrenic patients (n = 30), with account being taken o f the special socialisation conditions of deaf persons and of their cultura l standards and values, Method: Data were collected with the help of semi-s tructured interviews; with the deaf patients these were conducted in German sign language. Using rating procedures we assessed seven social support co mponents, selected items from a history schedule for schizophrenia, and the probands' visual and verbal language skills. Results: The social networks of the two deaf groups were found to have larger gaps than those of the hea ring schizophrenic patients, with significant differences being registered most clearly in the comparison between deaf schizophrenic and hearing schiz ophrenic patients. Comparison of the verbal and visual language skills of t he two deaf groups revealed a substantial deficit among the deaf schizophre nics. Visual language skills were found to correlate more strongly than ver bal language skills with the social support components. Conclusion: Preling ual deafness has a strong impact on the course of schizophrenia. In the lon g run, many of these patients belong to a "minority within a minority".