Mental and behavioral disorders among people with congenital deafblindness.

Dammeyer (2011) asked 95 adults who were born both deaf and blind about mental-health diagnoses.

Staff and medical records helped list every behavioral or psychiatric label each person carried.

The survey took place in Norway and counted any diagnosis from mild anxiety to severe behavior disorder.

Three out of four adults had at least one mental or behavioral diagnosis.

The high rate shows how hard it is to tell sensory-driven behavior from true psychiatric symptoms.

Authors warned that deafblindness itself can look like autism, ADHD, or psychosis.

Dammeyer (2014) later saw the same overlap in children: kids born deafblind scored high on autism checklists even when they did not have autism.

Kiani et al. (2019) found that adults with ID who are only blind still meet autism criteria three times more often, so vision loss alone inflates scores.

Moss et al. (2009) flipped the lens and showed that one in five adults with ID have hidden deaf-blindness, meaning sensory loss is missed as often as mental illness.

Together these papers say: sensory impairment raises both autism scores and psychiatric labels, so always rule out sensory causes first.

When you see self-hitting, rocking, or limited eye contact in a deafblind client, pause before adding an autism or mood label. Ask for audiology and vision reports, use tactile cues, and bring in an interdisciplinary team. Clear sensory baselines cut misdiagnosis and keep treatment plans focused on real needs, not assumed disorders.