Assessment and Treatment of Deaf Adults with Psychiatric Disorders

Abstract

Many deaf individuals comprise a unique cultural and linguistic minority group. This article reviews the current research literature related to the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of culturally deaf individuals suffering from mental disorders. Appropriate psychiatric assessment and treatment requires that clinicians be sensitive to issues of language and differences in social norms and cultural values. Emerging trends in research indicate greater diagnostic specificity and a broader range of diagnoses being assigned in services that are specialized for the treatment of deaf people with mental health issues. Culturally sensitive evaluation and treatment involves a thorough assessment of language modality and language fluency, deafness/audiological history, and cultural identification. Failure to consider these factors during the mental status exam can lead to misdiagnosis. Important issues that confound differential diagnosis and psychiatric treatment of the deaf population are highlighted and discussed. Recommendations for the provision of culturally and linguistically appropriate care are provided.

Auditory Hallucination in Post Lingual Deaf Person: a Case Report

“…However, the phenomenon of auditory hallucinations among postlingual deaf patients is poorly elucidated to date. In such cases, communication gets compromised as it is very hard to get the idea of perception of auditory hallucination in a deaf person [11][12][13][14]. The current assessment method bears difficulty in exploring auditory hallucination in deaf patients even using the established sign languages [4,13].…”

Traumatization and Trauma Cases: Childhood Adversity and Deafness

“…Many deaf individuals comprise a unique linguistic minority group where they identify themselves with the Deaf culture [29]. Some experiences overlap with trauma in the general population, but many are unique to Deaf people as lack of communication good enough for them to be at ease with the hearing community.…”

“…Isolation may occur and disempowerment. There seems to be an agreement that the group of DHH individuals are more at risk of trauma and traumatic reactions than the general population [29,[47][48][49]. Landsberger highlights the fact that children with disabilities are 3.4 times more likely to be abused than children without these difficulties and that the DHH children and adolescents may be twice as likely to experience different kinds of abuse and neglect.…”

Psychiatric Care of Deaf Patients in the General Hospital: An Overview

“…2,3 ) Psychiatric consultants may be called to assist with the differential diagnosis, management, and capacity evaluations, bearing in mind that Deaf persons' trauma exposure, mood and anxiety disorders, and psychosis may present distinctively and occur at higher rates than found in the general population and that certain etiologies and histories of deafness (such as total language dysfluency, the absence of any signed-or spoken-language learning) may correlate with cognitive deficits. 4 The global number of Deaf and hard-of-hearing persons is estimated at 600 million. 5 Yet owing to the paucity of Deafaccessible mental health services in many parts of the world, including the United States, utilization of psychiatric services by Deaf patients is often limited; thus gaining experience and confidence in the care of Deaf patients poses a challenge for psychiatrists in training as well as their supervisors.…”