Deafness and Substance Abuse

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the language and cultural aspect of deafness. The author discusses the effect these have on the deaf substance abuser's therapeutic relationship and on the treatment. It is also stressed that more research is needed to aid deaf and hearing impaired people.

From the Paper:

"According to Robert Pollard (1996) approximately about 40,000 deaf Americans suffer from serious psychopathology. Only 2% of Deaf Americans in need of mental health services receive them. The Deaf population is severely underserved, proven by this fact. Individuals who are deaf constitute a special subgroup of the disabled population for whom counseling services are insufficiently provided (Tucker, 1981).According to Johnson and Locke (1978), research on substance abuse among deaf people is meager. Enough drug and alcohol abuse in a residential school for the deaf was present to justify special intervention and prevention programs (cited in McCrone, 1982). The deaf alcoholic is not only isolated from society because of his/her alcoholism, but the deaf community is normally an isolated group of people and there is the painful awareness of isolation for a person who is not only deaf but also ill with the disease of alcoholism (Hetherington, 1979). It is evident, as I will show in the following paper, more research is needed to allow mental health centers to provide services for hearing impaired and deaf individuals. This paper will focus on one of the reasons the mental health community has not fully served this cultural population."

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