Community Mental Health Teams' perspectives on providing care for Deaf people with severe mental illness

Abstract

Background: Deaf sign language users encounter many barriers to accessing local services and receiving appropriate help and treatment. As a result Deaf people with serious mental illness can fall through the net of service provision.

Aims: To identify and explore the issues involved in providing care for Deaf people with serious mental health problems from the perspective of community mental health teams (CMHT).

Method: Eight focus groups were used to explore perceptions and experiences of providing care for this population. Discussions were recorded and transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis. Data analysis was supported by ATLAS-ti, (Scientific Software Development, ) a software package for coding and organising qualitative data.

Results: Five key themes were identified: (1) CMHT lack of skills/knowledge/resources, (2) Communication difficulties, (3) Distance of specialist Deaf services, (4) Joint working between CMHT and specialist Deaf services, and (5) Issues specific to Deaf patients. Findings are discussed in the context of implications for improving the access and provision of care for Deaf people with severe mental illness.

Conclusions: CMHTs frequently feel ill equipped to provide care for Deaf patients with severe mental illness. Implications require ongoing attention to ensure a more collaborative and efficient continuity of care.

Declaration of interest: The first author is funded by The London Consortium for Specialist Deaf Mental Health Services who also fund the Deaf Enhanced Support Team (DEST). The second author is employed by South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust at National Deaf Services (NDS) (of which DEST is a part) supporting clients funded by both the London Consortium and other Primary Care Trusts nationally.

Keywords:

• Community Mental Health Services
• deafness
• sign language

Notes

1 The convention of using capitalized “Deaf” when referring to people who consider themselves members of the cultural Deaf community and users of sign language and lower case “deaf” used when referring to people who are deaf but do not consider themselves to be members of this group is followed in this paper.