Psychotherapy with Deaf Clients from Diverse Groups

Introduction

ix Introduction In the mental health arena, every book represents a stepping stone in the endeavor to understand human nature and the forces that shape it. Ultimately, this understanding should elucidate the process of human development, facilitating the ability of mental health service providers to enhance the quality of life for individuals struggling with mental health issues. The field of mental health is increasingly affirming mental health treatment processes that are culturally relevant and culturally sensitive, as shown by the growing number of publications on best practices. Following several publications on best practices in providing mental health services to deaf individuals, the first edition of this book, Psychotherapy with Deaf Clients from Diverse Groups, broke new ground as the first single volume to present a compendium of perspectives on mental health work with diverse subcomponents of the deaf community. Ten years later, the field has developed even further, as this second edition demonstrates . Nonetheless, the following remains true: “To note that the practitioner must take into account clients’ social, ethnic, racial, linguistic, and other culturally defining characteristics has become almost a banality of the trade. Developing the particular skills and sensibilities necessary to make that axiom not just a cliché but a vital part of clinical training and practice is imperative” (Aponte, Rivers, & Wohl, 1995, pp. x-xi). Taking on the mantle of cross-cultural therapy requires the understanding that cultures manifest themselves differentially in features such as attitudes, forms of emotional expression, patterns of relating to others, and ways of thought. To do this, practitioners need to step outside the traditional Euro-American academic and professional conceptualizations, which are comfortable because of their own backgrounds and training, and confront unfamiliar worldviews and expectations that may defy their traditional assumptions in providing therapy. In the case of deaf people, this approach facilitates a paradigm shift away from equating deafness with pathology to following a way of life as a deaf person. Sensitivity to all of these components is integral to the evolution of the psychotherapeutic process; developing this sensitivity is a necessary part of becoming “culturally literate.” To be culturally literate in working with deaf people is to acknowledge the concept that “deaf” in and of itself does not always presuppose certain ways of language use, communication modes, certain ways of functioning, and certain ways of “being.” Feelings of connection within groups of deaf people are based not necessarily on auditory status per se, but more on their individual life experiences and the ways in which they are exposed to the deaf community. Deaf1 persons who choose to rely on spoken 1. For consistency, “deaf” refers to the audiological condition of hearing loss and “Deaf” refers to Deaf people as a cultural group x Introduction language can feel their own way of being deaf deep down in their inner core of being, not necessarily in a pathological sense, just as culturally Deaf persons feel Deaf when they search for their own inner essence. To complicate the issue, not all individuals are Deaf in the same way. Deaf people come from diverse cultures and live varying cultural lifestyles. It is time to acknowledge that multiculturalism as represented by different ways of life and different ethnic cultures in and of itself has already strongly influenced Deaf culture as we know it in the United States, as is abundantly clear in this book. Currently, deaf people are engaged in an ongoing struggle to shape the relationship between the cultural background into which they were born and contemporary Deaf culture without losing their unique heritage. Psychotherapists working with deaf clients from diverse groups should attune not only to relevant group attributes but also to the ways in which the interaction between these attributes and the deaf dimension play themselves out during the therapeutic process. This premise has influenced the direction I have chosen for this book, specifically the focus on psychotherapeutic approaches within a diversity framework. Using this paradigm, I asked the contributing authors to reflect on the specific cultures and lifestyles of clients within the deaf community with which they feel an affinity. These reflections explore the authors’ perspectives of the deaf/Deaf constituencies they work with, the mental health issues within these communities, the consequences for individual life directions, and the treatment approaches that work best. This sets the foundation for the entire book. Increasing numbers of deaf professionals have joined the ranks of their nondeaf colleagues as mental health service providers (Leigh & Lewis, this volume) and have begun to take their places as...