News Archive

11th July 2002: Sign of the Times: Modernising Mental Health Services for Deaf People

The Department of Health launched their consultation document, A Sign of the Times, at the UK Council on Deafness Mental Health and Deafness conference on 11th July.

SUMMARY of SIGN OF THE TIMES
By the Department of Health

A Sign of the Times is a Department of Health consultation document. It is about the best way to improve mental health services for Deaf people. When we talk about Deaf people, we mean those who use sign language as their main way of communicating.
There are more than 50,000 Deaf people in the country. Mental health problems occur more frequently in Deaf children compared to hearing children. Deaf adults appear to suffer more from mental health problems than hearing adults, although it is unclear just how large this difference is.

The hearing community are largely unaware of the unique identity of the Deaf population. They tend to think of Deafness purely as a physical problem and don't know about the cultural and social issues.

Deaf people find it hard to get help from health and social services. Deaf people with mental health problems are no exception. There are three very specialist mental health services for Deaf people in the whole country and a high secure service at Rampton Hospital. They have come about because of the commitment of individuals rather than a proper plan. They can't look after everyone and certainly can't see everyone close to their homes. They also have to deal with a wider range of problems than a hearing service would.

There is a National Service Framework for Mental Health, which sets out the standards that everyone with mental health problems should expect.

These standards are about

• mental health promotion
• primary care and access to services
• services for people with severe mental illness
• caring about carers
• the prevention of suicide.

A Sign of the Times looks at how we could meet these standards for the Deaf community. It also talks about the ideas that people have come up with so far.
There are some things that most people seem to agree about

• that Deaf people find it hard to access mental health services
• that Deaf awareness is very important
• that good mental health services for Deaf people will cost more
• that a Deaf person is more likely to get better in a signing environment
• that we don't know enough about the needs of Deaf people
• that we won't be able to do a great deal very quickly.

We say that local health and social services should work together to make sure that Deaf people are included in their plans. This would mean

• more interpreting available
• training in deaf awareness for staff in places like doctors' surgeries
• training for some staff in how to spot mental health problems in Deaf people

We say that we will continue to need the very specialist services but that we need something between them and local services.

There seem to be two choices here.

1. We could try and make sure that every mental health service was able to meet the needs of nearly every Deaf person.

Or

2. We could try and help the specialist services to spread themselves more widely and support all Deaf people with serious mental health problems.

However we do it, we should make Deaf children and young people a priority.
It is important that the three centres work very closely together.
We need more research into the needs of Deaf people.
We want to know what people think and all ideas are welcome.
In the Autumn, we will put all the ideas together and come up with a plan.

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