Posted by alexandra_k on February 12, 2020, at 23:08:47
In reply to No person born blind has ever been Schizophrenic:, posted by PeterMartin on February 12, 2020, at 8:06:02
Hmm...
I'm not sure that I am convinced that there is an explanandum, here.
Suppose that blindness is protective against schizophrenia? Wouldn't you also expect blindess to be protective against related diagnoses such as brief episodic psychosis? I mean, there are diagnoses that are similar to schizophrenia but don't require the symptoms to be present for as long. As such, patients who are eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia are often diagnosed with several things on the way to getting to their diagnosis of schizophrenia. If that makes sense. As such, I really would expect that if it were true that blindness was protective for schizophrenia one would also expect to see that it was protective for some of those other, related, diagnoses.
So... I think the whole thing sounds fishy. That they say specifically that they did not find a negative association for those related diagnoses.
How about hallucinations? Just simple old hallucinations? They want to wax on at length about hallucinations, particularly, but apparently there wasn't a negative association for blindness and any other disorder involving hallucinations other than schizophrenia.
The whole thing sounds based on a false premise to me.
I think the sample size is likely very small. There aren't many blind people. There aren't many people with schiozphrenia. So.. There are likely only a small number of overlapping (or apparently there are none at all). Hrm.
What did they do? A literature search for 'blindness and schizophrenia' and get no hits?
Surely not.
Surely not.
Sigh.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1108443
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20200104/msgs/1108446.html