Abstract
The author was the director or co-director of a specialty Deaf psychiatric inpatient unit for 17 of its 23 years. In Part 1 of this article, the author reflected on the lessons learned about deaf psychiatric patients from this experience. These lessons include recognition of the wide continuum of communication skills and deficits of the deaf persons served and the significant numbers of deaf patients who have poor communication skills in any language. The author also supported the hypothesis that many deaf psychiatric patients have a particular disorder involving language dysfluency, related mainly to language deprivation and an array of psychosocial skill deficits present from childhood and continuing into adulthood.This disorder may be mistaken for more familiar forms of mental disorders or it may accompany them. In Part 2 of this article, the author reflects on lessons learned about adapting mental health treatment and about staff and program development.
Recommended Citation
Glickman, N. S. (2019). Lessons Learned from 23 Years of Deaf Psychiatric Inpatient Unit: Part 2. JADARA, 44(2). Retrieved from https://nsuworks.nova.edu/jadara/vol44/iss2/5
