Psychotherapy with Deaf Clients from Diverse Groups

3 Deaf Therapists and the Deaf Community: Issues to Consider

39 3 Deaf Therapists and the Deaf Community: Issues to Consider IRENE W. LEIGH AND JEFFREY W. LEWIS Deaf therapists are now part of the core of mental health providers serving the American and European deaf communities. Currently, the American Deafness and Rehabilitation Association (ADARA), an organization comprising professionals providing services to deaf and hard of hearing persons, can boast that roughly 47% of its members are deaf or hard of hearing, and many of them are mental health professionals (ADARA, personal communication, February 23, 2009). In Canada, there is one deaf clinical psychologist (Swanson, 2007) as well as an estimated 12 to 15 deaf mental health service providers (K. Frayn, personal communication, February 12, 2009). The increase in the number of deaf mental health professionals in the United States is partly due to laws such as Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (Leigh, Clark, Cohen, Lewis, & Wax, 1991; Pollard, 1992–93, Pollard, 1996) that encourage training programs to admit deaf and hard of hearing applicants and provide appropriate access to learning opportunities. As a result, deaf and hard of hearing therapists can obtain training in settings throughout the United States, including Gallaudet University, a prime training site with its clinical psychology PhD program, a mental health counseling MA program, and a master’s of social work program, each of which is professionally accredited. Graduates from these programs provide clinical supervision to current trainees. In contrast to the previous generation of deaf professionals who were trained by faculty with little or no experience with deaf persons and the deaf community, newer deaf and hard of hearing professionals now can receive professional supervision from seasoned deaf and hard of hearing academicians and clinicians who are versatile in their understanding of mental health issues and the deaf community. This empowerment of deaf professionals has been enhanced by scholars who formulated a new approach to understanding deaf people, one that increasingly relied on sociolinguistic and empowerment paradigms (e.g., Lane, Hoffmeister, & Bahan, 1996; Leigh, 2009; Padden & Humphries, 1988, 2005, see below) in contrast to the more pervasive deficit model (Scott-Hill, 2004), which focuses on hearing loss and the need for correction or remediation. Ultimately, this has resulted in greater recognition of the contributions of deaf people. The importance of a broadened exposure to, and The authors wish to acknowledge Anna Crisologo’s assistance in updating the literature cited in this chapter. 40 Overview respect for, deaf professionals is highlighted by the results of a survey covering mental health professionals’ attitudes toward deaf people based on previous contact with deaf people and knowledge of this population (Cooper, Rose, & Mason, 2003). While previous knowledge did not always correlate with positive attitudes toward deaf people, professional contact with deaf people of equal or higher status was related to more positive attitudes. This has significant bearing on increasing respect for professionals who themselves are deaf, a trend that has also affected mental health work. For example , Vernon (2006) mentions the inroads of deaf psychologists into the American Psychological Association governance structure. Deaf professionals are now presenting at major conferences that focus on mental health issues. This documents how deaf people in the mental health field have “arrived.” By virtue of who they are, different expectations exist for deaf therapists. At the very least, there is an expectation, true or not, that deaf therapists are experientially aware of what it really means to be deaf—or culturally Deaf as the situation may be—and by extension , they have better insight, more commitment, and greater rapport with these clients (Gulati, 2003; Harvey, 2003; Leigh et al., 1991). Brauer (1979) conducted interviews with students at a college for the deaf and found a preference for deaf over nondeaf interviewersdespitethefactthatallinterviewerswereequallyproficientinAmericanSignLanguage (ASL). This preference was corroborated by Lewis’s (1987) research with a sampling of the same population in which he showed that deaf subjects, regardless of parental hearing status or school background, had a significantly more positive interviewer rating when told that the interviewer was deaf. In another study some deaf therapists reported significantly lower deaf client dropout rates compared to nondeaf clinicians (Langholtz & Heller,1986).Itisthereforeplausiblethatthosewhoareconnectedtothedeafcommunity might view a deaf therapist as more credible in terms of cultural and communication parameters. This is consistent with research findings based on minority group counselor preferences and perceptions of counselor credibility (e.g., Beutler, Machado, & Neufeld, 1994) as well as the possibility of reducing cultural mistrust, which can be avoided when therapists do not inadvertently invalidate...