Miss-Delectable
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2004
- Messages
- 17,160
- Reaction score
- 7
An End To The Silent Suffering (from The Herald )
DREAMS can be powerful. For Michael Anderson, it was a dream that first triggered a breakdown that had been brewing for years. He believes his deafness, diagnosed as a toddler, combined with his parents' divorce, led him to feel inadequate and unwanted. In his teens, when he was also diagnosed as visually impaired, he felt isolated and struggled to make friends. His future initially looked bright at agricultural college. Then came the nightmare, triggering a crash from which it took him four years to recover.
"In the dream I was looking down on a pigsty, surrounded by a rickety fence. Inside was a pig, which was completely limp - and, I realised, visually impaired," he says. "Every time it took a breath it breathed out phlegm. Folks were looking in, wondering what to do with this sorrowful animal. And then I realised that the pig was me and I was so frightened that I would ultimately die alone - a deaf-blind person with asthma, limp and helpless."
Michael, from Larbert, is only able to communicate with the help of two hearing aids. Unable to share his fears, he internalised them and suffered in silence. Regardless, he got a good job, married and had a family. But life was not straightforward.
In his late twenties his symptoms were ascribed to Usher's syndrome - a rare condition that starts with deafness in childhood and leads to deaf-blindness - and in his thirties was told he would completely lose his sight within eight years.
"I reacted quite calmly," he says. "I was asked if I'd like to be registered as a blind person and I said I might as well. I went back to work, told my supervisor, then phoned my wife. I said a few words and burst into tears."
Mobility training and Braille lessons were offered, but not the support he needed to deal with the mental and emotional upheaval. Eventually, suffering from depression, he took early retirement. "Afterwards I was very depressed for about three years," he remembers.
His doctor gave him medication but not the talking therapy he needed. Now 67, he has since gone to several counsellors but believes even the best-intentioned are simply unable to understand the impact of his condition on his mental health.
Michael is far from alone. According to recent research, deaf people are four times more likely than the general population to experience mental health problems. Some 57,000 Scots are "severely or profoundly" deaf, while 5000 are deaf-blind.
Lilian Lawson, director of the Scottish Council on Deafness (SCoD), says there is a clear connection between deaf people's communication difficulties and their mental health. "Some deaf children suffer from isolation or are bullied or ignored. Other deaf people have suffered sexual abuse and are unable to communicate with their parents about what has happened, be believed or get support.
"A deafened person someone who goes deaf later in life may suffer mental health problems because she or he is suddenly unable to communicate with their partner, family and friends."
Yet mental health services for this group, says Lawson, are woeful. SCoD can list countless cases of deaf people who have gone for years without being diagnosed because of communication problems, others who are unable to access counselling because the service is not available in British Sign Language (BSL), and yet more who are isolated in mainstream hospitals, waiting weeks for an available interpreter.
Currently the only specialist mental health service in Scotland is a monthly clinic held by the Manchester-based John Denmark Unit, where the staff team are trained in BSL as well as deaf awareness and deaf culture. Those looking for an in-patient place in a specialist hospital also have to travel to the English centre.
This situation, according to Lawson, is simply not acceptable. In response SCoD is preparing its case in a paper to be launched on May 8, which will highlight the discrimination faced by deaf people attempting to access mental health services. After years of campaigning with little success, SCoD is also making a fresh call for the creation of a standalone mental health unit in Scotland, better outreach services and equal access to treatment for the deaf.
With a worrying high incidence of suicide in the deaf community, this is an issue campaigners insist cannot be ignored. In 2006, the Glasgow-based organisation Deaf Connections commissioned a small-scale study into the problem. Of the 18 deaf and deafened people interviewed, all knew other deaf people who had committed suicide, three had made an attempt on their own lives and 50% had felt suicidal.
Drena O'Malley, acting director of Deafblind Scotland, agrees that early intervention is key. She explains: "Many deaf-blind people are hanging on to their mental wellbeing by a thread. But we need to keep them clinging to the cliff. If they fall it's the devil's own work to get them back up again."
A Scottish centre of excellence' is also badly needed, she says. "It doesn't need to be large or costly."
There are glimmers of hope on the horizon. Lothian NHS is now running a pilot counselling service specifically for the deaf, and last month the John Denmark Unit launched a training course for mental health workers in Glasgow in deaf awareness. In June this year, NHS Lothian will launch Scotland's first specialist mental health service for the deaf. It will employ a community psychiatric nurse and an occupational therapist, who will be based at Deaf Action's Edinburgh offices, but will be available to those in the Lothian area for the foreseeable future.
Nic Goodwin, Deaf Action's Head of Services, says: "It is a very exciting development and a great start - but there is still a very long way to go."
The dream is that the service will act as a model for health boards across Scotland. And it is one that SCoD is determined to make a reality.
# For more information about SCoD's briefing paper, launched on May 8, see The Scottish Council on Deafness
DREAMS can be powerful. For Michael Anderson, it was a dream that first triggered a breakdown that had been brewing for years. He believes his deafness, diagnosed as a toddler, combined with his parents' divorce, led him to feel inadequate and unwanted. In his teens, when he was also diagnosed as visually impaired, he felt isolated and struggled to make friends. His future initially looked bright at agricultural college. Then came the nightmare, triggering a crash from which it took him four years to recover.
"In the dream I was looking down on a pigsty, surrounded by a rickety fence. Inside was a pig, which was completely limp - and, I realised, visually impaired," he says. "Every time it took a breath it breathed out phlegm. Folks were looking in, wondering what to do with this sorrowful animal. And then I realised that the pig was me and I was so frightened that I would ultimately die alone - a deaf-blind person with asthma, limp and helpless."
Michael, from Larbert, is only able to communicate with the help of two hearing aids. Unable to share his fears, he internalised them and suffered in silence. Regardless, he got a good job, married and had a family. But life was not straightforward.
In his late twenties his symptoms were ascribed to Usher's syndrome - a rare condition that starts with deafness in childhood and leads to deaf-blindness - and in his thirties was told he would completely lose his sight within eight years.
"I reacted quite calmly," he says. "I was asked if I'd like to be registered as a blind person and I said I might as well. I went back to work, told my supervisor, then phoned my wife. I said a few words and burst into tears."
Mobility training and Braille lessons were offered, but not the support he needed to deal with the mental and emotional upheaval. Eventually, suffering from depression, he took early retirement. "Afterwards I was very depressed for about three years," he remembers.
His doctor gave him medication but not the talking therapy he needed. Now 67, he has since gone to several counsellors but believes even the best-intentioned are simply unable to understand the impact of his condition on his mental health.
Michael is far from alone. According to recent research, deaf people are four times more likely than the general population to experience mental health problems. Some 57,000 Scots are "severely or profoundly" deaf, while 5000 are deaf-blind.
Lilian Lawson, director of the Scottish Council on Deafness (SCoD), says there is a clear connection between deaf people's communication difficulties and their mental health. "Some deaf children suffer from isolation or are bullied or ignored. Other deaf people have suffered sexual abuse and are unable to communicate with their parents about what has happened, be believed or get support.
"A deafened person someone who goes deaf later in life may suffer mental health problems because she or he is suddenly unable to communicate with their partner, family and friends."
Yet mental health services for this group, says Lawson, are woeful. SCoD can list countless cases of deaf people who have gone for years without being diagnosed because of communication problems, others who are unable to access counselling because the service is not available in British Sign Language (BSL), and yet more who are isolated in mainstream hospitals, waiting weeks for an available interpreter.
Currently the only specialist mental health service in Scotland is a monthly clinic held by the Manchester-based John Denmark Unit, where the staff team are trained in BSL as well as deaf awareness and deaf culture. Those looking for an in-patient place in a specialist hospital also have to travel to the English centre.
This situation, according to Lawson, is simply not acceptable. In response SCoD is preparing its case in a paper to be launched on May 8, which will highlight the discrimination faced by deaf people attempting to access mental health services. After years of campaigning with little success, SCoD is also making a fresh call for the creation of a standalone mental health unit in Scotland, better outreach services and equal access to treatment for the deaf.
With a worrying high incidence of suicide in the deaf community, this is an issue campaigners insist cannot be ignored. In 2006, the Glasgow-based organisation Deaf Connections commissioned a small-scale study into the problem. Of the 18 deaf and deafened people interviewed, all knew other deaf people who had committed suicide, three had made an attempt on their own lives and 50% had felt suicidal.
Drena O'Malley, acting director of Deafblind Scotland, agrees that early intervention is key. She explains: "Many deaf-blind people are hanging on to their mental wellbeing by a thread. But we need to keep them clinging to the cliff. If they fall it's the devil's own work to get them back up again."
A Scottish centre of excellence' is also badly needed, she says. "It doesn't need to be large or costly."
There are glimmers of hope on the horizon. Lothian NHS is now running a pilot counselling service specifically for the deaf, and last month the John Denmark Unit launched a training course for mental health workers in Glasgow in deaf awareness. In June this year, NHS Lothian will launch Scotland's first specialist mental health service for the deaf. It will employ a community psychiatric nurse and an occupational therapist, who will be based at Deaf Action's Edinburgh offices, but will be available to those in the Lothian area for the foreseeable future.
Nic Goodwin, Deaf Action's Head of Services, says: "It is a very exciting development and a great start - but there is still a very long way to go."
The dream is that the service will act as a model for health boards across Scotland. And it is one that SCoD is determined to make a reality.
# For more information about SCoD's briefing paper, launched on May 8, see The Scottish Council on Deafness
I think it is especially important for parents to understand, and counselors who may be unfamiliar with any kind of disability other than mental illness.