I'm in the first section where I play as Brian and the game freezes in the hallway of the mental hospital. It seems whenever a voice-sample plays from the orderly's DS, the game just stops responding.

Is there any solution, fix or patch for this problem?

Its a bug. I had the same problem. To solve it, don't talk to the door where Quickle is before talking to the nurse and solving the riddle with the old guys.

I had so frequent freezing in the hallway that I had to skip two cutscenes (the radiator one and the one with Ernie and Chuck) and watch those two cutscenes from the Internet. Ernie seems to be reason for the crashes, because once he became busy with Chuck the crashing stopped completely.

I don't know if it applies to this particular crash, but I read from Pendulo forums that most crashes in the Chapter 2 seem to have something to do with the issues with old ATI and Realtek audio drivers (although I have latest version of both and it didn't help at all). Patch supposedly fixed the issues in Chapter 2, but it did a bad job, considering that I experienced crashing after every 2-10 seconds when Brian was in hallway.

Have a similar problem. It isn't with the DS-Voices. It is, when I start to cross Ernie with the Barry White thing. From that point on the game freezes.