As always, ASC welcomes your feedback, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters.

To join the ASC Newsletter mailing list, send your name and email address to: asc@ascdeaf.com.

The post When Worrying is Too Much: Spring 2007 ASC Newsletter appeared first on Deaf Counseling Center.

To cite:

McCullough, C. (2007, May 1). The Secret: Self-help Snake Oil. ASC on the Couch. Retrieved May 1, 2007, from http://www.ascdeaf.com/blog/?p=308

The post The Secret: Self-help Snake Oil appeared first on Deaf Counseling Center.

The women in the study need to meet the following criteria:

1. The Deaf women need to be native ASL users (grew up in a Deaf family and/or attended a residential school for the Deaf)

2. They all need to have the experience of childhood sexual abuse where they were sexually molested by their brother when they were a child;

3. They need to have talked with one or more of their family members about the sexual abuse; and

4. They need to have a support network upon which they will rely, before, during, and after their participation in this study.

What’s Involved: As participants in the study, two Deaf women will have a conversation with one another about having told one or more of their family members about their brother sexually assaulting them. They will not be asked to discuss the sexual abuse per se. This conversation will last approximately one hour and will take place in a location that is comfortable and convenient for the two women. The conversation will be videotaped, but no one else will be in the room for the conversation, only the two women will be there. The women’s identity will be kept strictly confidential. All participants will be asked to choose a pseudonym that will be in all written material. No other identifying information will be used. The location of the conversation will depend on who the study participants are and where they live. Travel and lodging costs will be paid by the researcher, although there will be no direct payment for participation.

Participants will also be asked to participate in an interview done by a Deaf study-interviewer. This will be done at a later date.

Then, at an even later date, Risa will have a conversation with each of these women (separately) about their earlier conversations. Each woman will be able to watch her videotape conversation and interview if she wishes, ask questions, provide clarification, and discuss any parts of the earlier conversations.

For More Information: Risa Shaw can be contacted at Risa.Shaw@yahoo.com. Feel free to ask her any questions, suggest names of others who might be interested, or express your interest in participating. Risa is happy to answer any questions people have about participating, and about her study in general.

The post Childhood Sexual Abuse: Deaf Women Needed for Research appeared first on Deaf Counseling Center.

For Every Step Forward: So far this month, we’ve seen Deaf artist Matt Daigle’s wonderfully designed breastfeeding logo win a national contest (that’s the logo in blue and white). We’ve learned of new research touting the mental health benefits of breastfeeding for children. But then, for all the progress and enlightenment we’ve supposedly achieved in our so-called advanced society of 2006, we have this: A mother, nursing her child on a plane while awaiting departure, was ordered by a flight attendant to cover up her child’s head with a blanket – or get off the plane, which she and her family eventually did.

The Good and the Bad Breast: What kind of society are we living in, where flight attendants find breastfeeding offensive and a BabyTalk magazine cover gets flak for showing a baby nursing at the breast? As Marilyn Yalom, author of the fascinating read, A History of the Breast, notes, contradictions surround female breasts. They are benevolent symbols of life, nature, and nurture; they are X-rated symbols of sexuality and lust. Breasts can be displayed in skin-tight shirts or barely-there bikini tops; but a nipple should never be displayed when a woman is breastfeeding. Breasts are entertaining in MTV videos and Renaissance-era statues and paintings; breasts should be covered up and harnessed in constricting bras.

Support for Nursing Mothers: It’s time for people to stop acting squeamish and silly when it comes to breastfeeding in public or catching a glimpse of a breast. There’s no need for anyone – mothers, children, or adult onlookers – to be embarrassed or ashamed about breasts or breastfeeding. There’s no need for nursing mothers to stress themselves out by trying to construct a tent-like shield around an exposed breast and nursing child. There’s no need for prudish parents to pass on to their children shameful messages about breasts and breastfeeding. For the de-planed mother, the law is on her side, as well as 30 parents who protested the airline’s actions at a nurse-in at the airport where the incident occurred. Let’s hope that Matt’s logo helps create a healthier and more supportive breastfeeding environment.

The post Breasts on a Plane appeared first on Deaf Counseling Center.

In a chapter of a book devoted to multicultural mental health, Marsella and Yamada (2000) describe how society’s long-standing and deep-rooted social injustices can hurt people’s mental health. We thought about the implications of these injustices for our Deaf community’s mental health, especially today at Gallaudet, where so many Deaf people are struggling with issues that impact their mental health. Summarized below are the authors’ main points, which we think are well worth repeating.

There can be no mental health:

Where there is powerlessness, for powerlessness breeds despair.

Where there is poverty, for poverty breeds hopelessness.

Where there is inequality, for inequality breeds anger and resentment.

Where there is racism, for racism breeds low self-esteem and self-denigration.

Where there is cultural disintegration and destruction, for cultural disintegration and destruction breed confusion and conflict.

The post Mental Health Concerns in Our Deaf Community: The Roots Grow Deep appeared first on Deaf Counseling Center.

The Gender Gap: Although all over the world, women are more likely than men to cry, the difference in frequency is not that great. American men, for example, have been found to cry about 1.8 times per month. American women cry about 3.5 times per month. Women may cry more often because they have naturally higher levels of prolactin, a hormone found in tears. Prolactin is also the hormone that triggers milk production.

The post The Healing Power of Tears appeared first on Deaf Counseling Center.

The Old Days: Back in 1974, a study (Sussman) found that Deaf adults who thought they did not speak well, had lower self-esteem levels than other Deaf adults who believed they were skilled in oral communication. These were the days before ASL was recognized as an official language, when Signed Exact English (SEE) and oralism were considered higher forms of communication than ASL.

And Now: Fast forward to the 1990’s and the first years of 2000. This is what several studies (Bat-Chava, 1993, 2000; Maxwell-McCaw,2001) found to be associated with higher self-esteem in Deaf adults: being able to communicate with family in sign language, using sign language in school, having Deaf parents, and having a culturally Deaf or bicultural identity. It is great to see how Deaf people’s self-perceptions are moving in a more positive direction!

The post Deaf Adults and Self-Esteem: How We Have Changed appeared first on Deaf Counseling Center.

The Communication Factor: Most people will say that the success of a Deaf-hearing relationship comes down to communication, just like it does in any other relationship. Communication, of course, is an extremely complicated matter for any couple. When it comes to listening and talking, couples may have differences based on gender (see Debra Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in Conversation or John Gray’s Men Are from Mars, Women Are From Venus), personality styles, or what they learned growing up in different families, each with their own unique communication dynamics. These differences in communication styles are difficult enough for most couples to deal with; when you have two different languages, and perhaps two different cultures, in a relationship, things can get even more complicated. In cases in which one partner is Deaf and the other hearing, what we have observed in our therapy work, is that the more “Deaf-centered” the relationship, the better the relationship seems to work.

Deaf-Centered vs. Hearing-Centered: A Deaf-centered relationship basically means that both partners sign to each other, take equal responsibility for communication issues, and are active members of the Deaf community. Couples with Deaf-centered relationships tend to socialize mostly with other Deaf and signing hearing friends, minimizing the number of social situations in which the hearing partner ends up interpreting for the Deaf partner. Hearing-centered relationships, in contrast, often find the Deaf person dependent upon the hearing partner for communication with nonsigning hearing friends, a situation that can create feelings of stress and frustration for both. A listing of characteristics of Deaf-centered versus hearing-centered relationships clearly shows the differences.

The post Deaf-Hearing Relationships: Happily Ever After? appeared first on Deaf Counseling Center.

The Politics Behind the DSM: A little bit of background on the DSM. The first edition was published in 1952; the latest version came out in 2000. The first edition had only 50 diagnoses. Today’s DSM lists 374 diagnoses, more than seven times the original book. Does this mean cases of mental illness have grown in leaps and bounds over the past half century? Not exactly. The increase in the number of diagnoses is more reflective of insurance companies’ demands for very detailed and specific diagnoses. It is also related to the increasing availability of medications that can only be prescribed for certain clusters of symptoms, thus making it necessary to invent names for these symptoms.

Diagnoses end up in the DSM as a result of votes by a panel of psychiatrists. Of course, the panel reviews research, listens to recommendations from mental health experts, and spends lots of time discussing each diagnosis. In the end, though, a diagnosis gets into the DSM if it is the panel’s opinion, or value judgment, that it is actually a mental disorder. Consider the diagnosis of Homosexuality. For years, the DSM counted it as a mental disorder, in spite of the fact that there was no research to support this. Thanks to the efforts of gay and lesbian mental health professionals to educate the public about this, the Homosexuality diagnosis was finally voted out of DSM in 1973.

More and more people who work in the mental health field have been writing about how unfair and harmful DSM diagnoses can be. Women, for example, have been labeled with psychiatric disorders just for having normal mood swings because of changes in hormones related to childbirth or their periods. African Americans and other minorities, including Deaf people, have often been labeled as paranoid even though their fears and anger make a lot of sense due to the oppression they experience.

One Deaf Woman’s Misdiagnosis: If you are looking for a book for your summer reading list, here is one worth checking out. I Was #87, by Anne Bolander and Adair Renning is a story that makes us glad that more and more Deaf professionals work in the mental health field today, making it less likely that Deaf people will be misdiagnosed.

The post Who Decides What is Normal and What is Not? appeared first on Deaf Counseling Center.

This book also makes us think about hearing privileges in the Deaf community. There are many parallels in the power relationships between Black/white people and Deaf/hearing people. Just like many job announcements state “qualified minority candidates are encouraged to apply”, so do some announcements state “qualified Deaf candidates are encouraged to apply”. You never see a job announcement stating “qualified white candidates are encouraged to apply”. White people are assumed to be qualified, while minorities and Deaf people seem to be assumed not to be qualified. We see “qualified women candidates” but not “qualified men candidates”. What is this all about??!!!

The post Majority Privileges appeared first on Deaf Counseling Center.