Are persons who are deaf "immune" to the symptom of "hearing voic!

Are persons who are deaf "immune" to the symptom of "hearing voices" if they also have schizophrenia?

I met a wonderful woman suffering from deafness at my workplace that taught me sign language.
My girlfriend married a man suffering from schizophrenia. I was thinking about them both one day, and this question came up in my mind.
One of the major symptoms of schizophrenia is an intrusive (usually male, loud and insistent) voice "in your head". If a person was deaf from birth, how (or would) that symptom of schizophrenia manifest itself if the person never heard speech?
I asked my girlfriend's husband, and he said "good question!"

Serious theories or opinions only, please.

2 weeks ago
Wow. Terrific responses so far.
I wish Dr. Haskins gave us more detail...like what was Jesus signing to them? Compassion? Consoling them? Encouraging them to endure? And they do hear voices? Which makes me wonder an impossible question..whether some forms of mental illness (schizophrenia being one of them) have a spritual component.
By the way, my girlfriend's husband "contracted" schizophrenia at the young age of 21 (not an unusual age at all for the onset of this disorder). At the same time, his brother was studying to become a Catholic priest and is now a much-beloved priest in the Diocese.
Coincidence?
Really makes me wonder whether lucifer and his minions has anything to do with this disorder in our society.

^Very interesting, thank you for asking such an intelligent question. This is what I found out. The information below is from the first site, the second sight is quite fascinating as well

According to Barbara Haskins, M.D.--an expert in the field of deafness and psychiatric disorders--"Deaf patients can hear voices, even if they have been deaf from birth and have never heard sound...there is ongoing debate about the neural mechanisms for this." (See Psychiatric Times, December 2000; and Altshuler KZ, Am J Psychiatry 127:1521-26).

Dr. Haskins also reports the occurrence of auditory, visual, tactile, and olfactory hallucinations in deaf individuals with co-morbid schizophrenia. Interestingly, according to Haskins, some deaf people with schizophrenia will report seeing "Jesus signing to them", which Dr. Haskins describes as "...a unique...psychotic feature that seems to fall between a typical auditory hallucination of communicative input and a typical visual hallucination." She points out that a disease like rubella can produce both deafness and schizophrenia-like symptoms (Lim et al, 1995).

Work by du Feu & McKenna (Acta Psychiatr Scand 1999;99:453-9) confirms that "auditory hallucinations are a common phenomenon in profoundly prelingually deaf schizophrenic patients" (with onset of deafness prior to the age of 2). Of course, it is hard to know whether what a congenitally deaf individual describes as a voice is really the same phenomenon as that described by hearing individuals--but then, each of us has a realm of experience that can't really be shared directly with others. Perhaps brain imaging studies, such as SPECT and PET scans, will help clarify these puzzling phenomena.

Second Site.
Voices for deaf people with illness?
When questioned by Di Briffa (DB) about hearing voices some responses from Deaf people in Briffa's (1999) article Hallucinations in Deaf people with a mental illness: lessons from the Deaf Clients indicated that deaf people with schizophrenia experience voices.

DB: "When you say you hear God talking to you, you're deaf. How do you hear him?" Client: "In my imagination, 'cause I have the power." DB: "Right so you don't see him signing to you?" Client: "No, just my imagination. 'Cause he has the power, cause the other people sign, they sign through the TV, and then tells people out, so I have nothing to do. Instead of me signing, cause you know I'd ...be too hard it'd be a lot easier... because the devil won't show me through the TV, so I can think these things up and I know that he's talking, and I know what needs to be done". (1999:73, transcript four).

Deaf people, like hearing people, can experience hallucinations, which can involve any of the senses (Briffa 1999). A research study by du Feu and McKenna (1999) examined patients who had been Deaf prior to the age of 2 years and who were diagnosed as schizophrenic/schizoaffective. They found that 59% of the patients gave accounts of verbal auditory hallucinations, which showed typical characteristics of schizophrenic hallucinations.

(Link to prelingually profoundly deaf schizophrenic patients who hear voices: a phenomological analysis. Journal??? June 1999, vol 99 (6) )

Some Deaf people who have schizophrenia have reported that they do experience voices. In a study conducted by Briffa (1999), some Deaf people described hearing voices, but when questioned about their deafness gave other interpretations. Some people also mentioned that despite removing their hearing aids, they still heard voices. Another client who was asked how they knew God was communicating with them responded by saying,

"Sign through hand, through my hand, it moves my hand. When I sign, no it's automatic in the brain, it automatically talks to God so I don't have to sign, talks from my brain, then from God to talk to me, uses my hand like that, it moves and talks to me and my brain talks to God and then it comes back through my hand and talks back to me and tells me" (Briffa 1999:73, Transcript five).