Lack Of Awareness Of The Deaf Community

According to the U.S. News & World Report “Deaf people are about twice as likely to have mental health problems as people in the general population, according to a new review of evidence” (U.S News, 2012). Deafness affects 15–26% of the world’s population, yet there is still little to no awareness of what it means to be Deaf. This has caused many problems in the Deaf community. In this research paper, I would like to focus on the issues surrounding mental illness influencing many Deaf people today. I would also like to discuss how a lack of awareness of the Deaf community and its needs leads to many of the problems revolving mental health issues in the Deaf community. Deaf people face many issues when dealing with mental illness. In this paper

In the study from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, mentioned before, participants were asked to express how they viewed mental health care services. Many of the participants explained they did not feel safe seeking help from mental health services. One woman explained that from a deaf person perspective “[jail and the mental hospital]” is the same. Some participants also expressed they felt they were “powerless and at the mercy of the hearing authorities prejudice”. One participant feared even visiting a mental hospital because a “miscommunication could lead to my being committed mistakenly” (Steinberg, Sullivan, & Loew, 1998). The Deaf community has a dark history with misdiagnosis. One article reports, “Mattie Hoge was a deaf woman misdiagnosed in 1929 or 1930, and she was institutionalized in the Forest Haven home for the retarded for 57 years until she was discovered. Hoge had not been tested appropriately and that was the reason for the misdiagnosis” (Berke, 2016). This is not a problem that occurred long long ago “the December 1998 newsletter of the Disability Advocates/Consultants of South Texas reported that around 1994, a child who had been labelled mentally retarded was found to have a moderate hearing loss instead” (Berke,

Spreading awareness of the Deaf community is the first step in creating better health care services for the Deaf community. In the hearing and medical perspective, Deaf people are often viewed as something to be fixed. This means most hearing Doctors believe, a Deaf person should try whatever they can to become hearing. It is very common in the hearing perspective to believe it is possible and desirable for all Deaf people to become “normal” or “like everyone else” through hearing aids and/or speech training and lip reading (oralism). Because most of the hearing world believes in the hearing perspective many deaf children go through life without learning sign language. Instead, Deaf children are implanted with cochlear implants and taught orally. Although cochlear implants have been shown to only fully function for 4.4 percent of people who are profoundly Deaf the hearing perspective sees Sign language as something that will hinder their Deaf child from